America's First Female Serial Killer. Mary Kay McBrayer

Auntie will see your carriage and I’ll have God knows what punishment to deal with on top of these window dressings.”

      “Listen to me. I will. I’ll go around the back street and you can walk through the neighbors’ yard. First I’ll take you home, and then I plan to save for a ring and convince you to marry me.”

      Because he did the first part of what he said, drove her home, talked idly of when he would come to court her and when he thought he would be able to ask formally, she believed the rest, too. After all, she had really nothing else to believe in. People in middle age believe young love weak because of its ignorance, but the first love is the strongest, and its simplicity forges its strength—it prevents the leaking in of any doubt. Young love is dangerous in its powers of devastation: without bad experience, one cannot judge to manage one’s expectations.

      At the house, Jane climbed the stairs into her attic room and barely felt the cold as she slid her hands from their secondhand gloves to shift logs into the stove. She lit the stove with the candle from downstairs, and lit those in her room by the washstand. Jane removed her dress and hung it by the cracked-open window. She unlaced her corset and draped it over the drying rack. After washing her face and hands, she moved by her chamber pot and with chapped fingers removed his semen from her like honey over a dipper, and then rinsed herself there as well. The water turned pink. She fastened a rag to the open crotch of her drawers. The pearly buttons rolling from her pocket into her hand reminded her of Tom, his bulk on all fours, gathering them from the corners and dusty baseboards in the washroom, him kneeling as his thick fingers dropped them one by one into her sweaty palm. He paused there when she said, “Oh really? What do you plan to do about it?” grinning, saying, Marry you, and putting her last button in her hand.