smile before she even turned.

In Saint Jude the story traveled faster than truth ever does.

Some people said Julian Vance had only done what poverty drove him to do.

Others said poverty can empty a pantry, but it does not make a father let men joke about his daughter as though she were freight.

Clara never joined the argument.

She sent flour to the Vance house once during the following winter and nothing more.

Every evening, when the light went amber over the pines and Elias called her name from the porch in that hard-won voice, she knew exactly where she stood on the question that still divided the town.