“What time is it?” she asked.
“Two a.m.,” James said. “We still have time.”
“Do we?”
He looked away.
“Tell me a story,” Sarah said. She needed to keep him talking, hear his voice, know he was still there.
James sighed. He stared at her face, her hair, her hands. He stared at her as though he needed to memorize everything about her all over again so he wouldn’t forget. “I never finished telling you how I met Chandresh on the Trail of Tears,” he said.
“That’s right.”
James watched the tailless black cat scamper across the hardwood floor and smiled. He looked out the window, his eyes small in concentration, that far-off look he always had whenever he spoke of his past.
“I had been living alongside the Cherokee in the Smoky Mountains.”
“That’s where you decided to stop hunting,” Sarah
