The July sun in Redstone Gulch didn’t just shine; it weighed heavily. It was a physical weight, like a red-hot iron on the back of Ellie Dawson’s neck as she knelt by the pigpen. The air was a thick soup of dust, manure, and the acrid, metallic smell of the copper mines that permeated the town.
Ellie’s knees hit the mud before she could scream.
A hand—bony, strong as iron, reeking of laundry detergent and righteous indignation—seized the back of her neck. It was a familiar grip, the practiced hand of a woman who wrung chickens’ necks without flinching. With a sudden, violent thrust, Ellie’s face was forced into the trough.
The gruel was hot and rancid, a mixture of rotten grains, potato peels, and filth. It filled her nose and burned her lungs as she choked. She clawed at the edges of the wood, her fingers whitening against the raw material, but the pressure on her skull only increased.
“Do you want to eat like an animal?” Ida’s voice hissed above her, calm and terrifyingly tender. “Then eat.”
Ellie had been drowning for three years. Not in the stream that crossed the ravine, but in silence. In a town of miners and deacons who, seeing the bruises blooming on her arms like dark flowers, averted their eyes.
When Ida finally helped her up, Ellie didn’t cry. She’d learned long ago that tears only fueled Ida’s anger. She stood there, dripping wet and panting, searching for an air that tasted of decay, while Ida Well Dawson dried her hands on her pristine cotton apron. Ida didn’t look like a monster; she looked like a deacon’s wife. She was the one who supplied the eggs to the church and the hams to the reverend.
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