“Dumb as a box of rocks,” her brother Johnny used to joke about the sheriff.

Her brother Danny had laughed. “Can outsmart him on my worst day.”

Thinking about Johnny and Danny made her throat tighten with a bone-deep sadness she doubted would ever leave her. God, how she missed those two.

“Don’t be thinking about me,” Johnny’s voice echoed in her head. “Be worried about Boyd.”

“Yeah,” Danny echoed. “He might be stupid, but he’s mean, and even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

The advice was sound. She would worry about her brothers and daughter once she was safe. Now she had to deal with Boyd.

What the lawman lacked in intelligence, he made up for in tracking skills. The man was part bloodhound. The state authorities would call Boyd if a prisoner escaped any jail in a twenty-five-mile radius. Even farmers called when they had a coyote killing their livestock. And at election time, he sniffed out enough illegal stills to make the Bible-thumpers happy.

Her father never took it personally when Boyd came after the stills. His job was to find them, and her father’s was to hide them. Everyone had to survive. But by Sadie’s way of thinking, Boyd had a petty streak in him. Those prisoners he brought back had a black eye or two when they finally made it to their cells. There was always a cow unaccounted for, and when Boyd wielded his bat against a still, he was always whistling a happy tune.

Boyd’s boots crunched on the soft dirt and leaves as he walked not more than twenty feet from her. “Sadie, I know you’re out there, girl. This is where your brothers used to hide. Make it easy on yourself, and come on out. I won’t hurt you.”

When she was little, she and the boys had played rabbit and the fox in the hollow. She was always the rabbit because she was the littlest—but also because she was good at burrowing into a small unconsidered place and could stay silent as she listened to her brothers’ laughter turn to frustration when they could not find their little rabbit.

Sadie closed her eyes and willed her entire system to slow. She pressed her face hard against the ground.

I’m just a leaf on a twig, she thought.

“Nothing important here,” she wanted to say. “Keep on moving, Sheriff Boyd.”

Booted footsteps moved closer to her hiding spot. Boyd’s heavy breathing proved he was not used to running either. He was a good six inches taller than her, but he was not built for speed, especially in the backwoods.

Sadie and her brothers roamed these hills like the Cherokee, Siouan, Iroquois, and the German and Scottish settlers who followed. If she was not hauling water to their house, she was carrying bags of corn and sugar or toting boxes of mason jars filled with shine. Even as a young child she could heft two bucketfuls of water up from the creek in less than five minutes without spilling a drop. No lady was strong like Sadie, but then she had never claimed to be fancy.

“Come on out, Sadie,” Sheriff Boyd said. “No one wants to hurt you.”

Sheriff Boyd’s voice was coated in an extra layer of sugar, but there was nothing sweet about his lies. If he found her, he would put the cuffs on her, just as he had threatened a dozen times before. And this time, he would take her to Lynchburg and see to it that Dr. Carter made sure she never had another child.

She squeezed her eyes tighter and thought about her beautiful baby girl sleeping in the cradle. She willed away her tears and sadness. She was not leaving her girl because she wanted to. Life had taken a hard turn and stripped away her choices. She could only take comfort knowing the child would be fine—maybe even fare better—in her grandmother’s care.

Sheriff Boyd’s breathing slowed as his big feet snapped twigs. The brush near her shifted and moved. She pictured his big hands pawing through the sticks and leaves and grabbing her by the collar.

I’m a gnat. A bug on a log. Too small to notice.

“Haven’t you been enough of a disappointment to your mama? Hasn’t she got enough on her shoulders without worrying about your brothers and the bastard she’ll surely be raising?”

Tears sprang up behind her closed lids. Maybe she was one of the worst daughters a mother could hope for. But she sure as hell was not going to let this hick sheriff use her own failings to flush her out of the brush like frightened quail.

“You’re a sorry girl.” Sheriff Boyd’s words trickled out on a heavy sigh. “You’re trouble.” When his berating did not work, he shifted gears. “You’d be so much better off if you let me help you. I’ll talk to the judge and tell him to go easy on you. We all know you didn’t mean to run that man over with your truck. It was an accident, pure and simple.”

His words burrowed under her resolve, and a sob took hold and sprang up in her throat. More tears filled her eyes. She pursed her lips. God help her; it had not been an accident. If given the chance, she would do it again.

Time slowly crawled by as she listened to the sound of his breathing. He took another step closer, and she could smell his cheap aftershave.

She held steady, doing her best not to think about Boyd. Boyd would not find this little rabbit tonight.

“Damn it, Sadie. I will find you.” The sheriff muttered a string of curses and ended his tirade with something about her burning in hell. “And I’ll see that the judge locks your scrawny ass up for a long damn time.”

The leaves rustled under Boyd’s boots as he turned back toward the road and the halo of headlights.

His car door slammed with anger, and the engine sputtered like an old man clearing his throat as he shifted into first. The clutch was going bad. She had told him often enough about the worn clutch, but just like everyone in the valley, he did not take her too seriously. Finally, the rubber tires began to roll; the engine ground from first to second gear and rattled off into the night, growling like an old man.

As tempted as she was to move, she stayed pressed against the cool earth. Her right arm, tucked under her body, had gone to sleep and now felt as if a thousand needles prickled under her skin. This was not the first time her arm had been pinned, and she had surely felt worse discomfort than this before.

An owl called out, hunting for its own rabbit, which hopped into a hollowed-out tree near her. Sadie smiled at the irony.

She knew Boyd was a wily son of a bitch, and she would not put it past him to double back on foot.

When she finally lifted her head, the moon had climbed in the night sky, and the clouds had parted, revealing an endless number of beautiful stars.

She tipped her face toward the North Star and then pushed up onto her knees. She paused, listening for Boyd again, before she brushed the dirt from her denim overalls and her brother’s old cotton work shirt. It had been his favorite, and normally, he would have been annoyed, but he was overseas fighting a war, and she knew it would be the least of his worries.

Slowly, she pushed through the brush and made her way up to the road. Going left would take her west, back up the mountain. There were plenty of places to hide, but staying hidden from Boyd would mean turning the woods she loved into its own kind of jail. Twenty miles to the south lay Charlottesville and the train station.

She slid her fingers into the big pockets and fingered the money her mother had given her. It was her mother’s emergency fund, and it weighed heavily on her soul, but she needed the three dollars. “I’ll pay you back, Mama.”