One down.
Then came a seamstress. Then a girl who played piano. Then a widow with a laugh that tried to pretend she wasn’t terrified. Each time, the crowd relaxed a little, like they were watching a proper order restored.
And each time, the line on that platform thinned.
At the far end stood a woman in a plain brown dress with a carpetbag that looked too light for all the miles it had traveled. Her name, I would later learn, was Clara Bennett—but on that day, she might as well have been called Last.
Clara held herself still in a way I recognized. Not pride. Not shyness. Something sharper. Like a person bracing for impact.
Her face was calm, but her hands—Lord help me, I noticed her hands—were clenched so tight her knuckles looked bleached. Tiny crescents of blood dotted her palms where her nails had bitten into skin.
She hadn’t drunk from the tin dipper when it passed. Not because she didn’t need it. Because she didn’t want to show she did.
Survival teaches you strange manners.
“Miss Dorothy Lane,” Harrow called, “accomplished with needle and thread—can make a man’s shirt from pattern to final button!”
A man from near Austin claimed her. Dorothy’s shoulders dropped like the weight of judgment slid off.
