Page 132 of In These Hills

“Try me.”

The speed of his response and certainty in his voice, the solidness of him beside her . . .

“I killed a man,” she said, her voice barely audible.

He didn’t move. He didn’t flinch. He just waited.

“I was speaking at a suffragist rally.” She inhaled then slowly let out the breath. “In Atlanta, where I’m from. Not quite a month ago. Miss Anthony was there and had spoken right before me. It was outside. Hundreds of people had gathered in the street, not all of them supporters.”

She recounted every detail she could remember. What she’d said in her speech, how a group of men in the crowd—one man in particular—began heckling her, how he’d thrown that first rotten egg, then the rock, then how a barrage of empty whiskey bottles had been unleashed. “Utter chaos broke out. The police eventually arrived, but instead of stopping the violence, they started arresting the suffragists—who were behaving peacefully!”

She described how she’d avoided being hauled off to jail because of what Todd had taught her. Next, the painful memories of losing Todd poured out, followed by the agony of how he’d died and the crushing blow of losing her parents soon after.

Dodge clasped her hands between his, listening without interrupting. Speaking of Sarah and her fiery Irish spirit brought a fleeting smile to both their faces, but it quickly vanished as she relayed how Clay Darden dragged her into the alley.

Dodge’s grip tightened. “Go on,” he said quietly, voice strained.

“He . . . got on top of me and started beating me with his belt. I looked for something, anything, to defend myself with and finally found a piece of a brick and—” Reliving the sensation of brick meeting bone sent a shiver through her. “I struck him in the head as hard as I could. And he just . . . slumped over. And didn’t get up. By then, Sarah had found me, so she saw it all happen. But he never came to. No pulse, nothing. So, we ran.”

“You killed that man in self-defense. A man who likely would have killed you.” His eyes narrowed. “Do you know who he was? Why he came after you?”

“When he interrupted my speech, I was quick to put him in his place, and some people in the crowd laughed. He didn’t like it. I could see he was embarrassed, but I was determined he wouldn’t get the best of me.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Ironic, isn’t it?” She watched a branch being whisked along by the creek’s current until the momentum finally pulled the branch under and it disappeared downstream. “What I didn’t know until Sarah found me in the alley was that he was the son of Frank Darden, the mayor of Atlanta. A man as anti-suffragist as they come.”

Dodge was silent for a moment, looking at the ring on her right hand before turning her hand over. He frowned and traced a forefinger over the healed cuts on her palm. “What’s this from?”

“I tried to shield my face from his belt.”

Slowly, he brought her hand to his mouth and pressed soft kisses on the faint scars. The gentleness she felt in the act, his understanding and compassion, pushed tears to the surface.

“Josephine, I—” His voice caught. “I’ve thought so many times about what I’d like to do to the man who did this to you. And even now, part of me wishes he were still alive so I could do it. I’m so sorry this happened. I’m sorry we live in a world where a man would do this to a woman.”

Josephine stared at their hands, fingers intertwined. “A fellow suffragist, Adelaide Stewart, a good deal older than me, we marched together on several occasions . . . She used to say that the worst thing you could do to a man was to laugh at him, to make fun of him. I always thought she was wrong.” Her throat tightened. “I don’t anymore.”

The distant rumble of a wagon slowly made its way toward them.

He finally looked over. “Surely, if we went to the authorities in Atlanta and explained what happened—”

“Mayor Darden routinely arrests women who support suffrage, and the conditions for them in the prison there are harsh, Dodge. They’re treated like criminals. If they refuse food, which some do, hoping to draw attention to the cause, Mayor Darden has them force-fed. Three women I’ve known personally nearly died from the liquid being pumped into the lungs instead of their stomachs. They suffered cuts to their mouths and their throats, then had high fevers and sickness. Can you fathom what he would do to the woman who killed his son?”

“And so you ran,” he said softly.

“With Sarah’s help, I got on the first train I could and got out of Atlanta. By the time I got to Chattanooga, authorities were already looking for me in the station. Same for Tullahoma. Slim Poyner helped me get by them and out of the station there and . . . well, you know the rest.”

She smiled but he didn’t.

“I treated you rudely that first night, Josephine, and I’m sorry. Especially knowing now what you’d been through. But I looked at you and . . . I think I saw all the pain and mistreatment Kathleen had been through. Then when I saw that sash sticking out of your coat pocket . . .”

“That certainly didn’t play in my favor, did it?”

That earned her a hint of a smile, at least.

“When we first pulled into Lynchburg that night, and I saw how small a town it was, and how remote, I thought I’d be safe. Especially when I found out there was no newspaper, no telegraph.”

“Cut off from the outside world.”

“Something like that. Then I learned that a ‘very wealthy man in town’ had the Chattanooga newspaper delivered to him.”

He shook his head. “Good ol’ Uncle Jack.”