In Montgomery, before Maycomb ever laid claim to them, Atticus met his future wife beneath a sky the color of hot tin. The courthouse steps had been crowded that day, men in pressed suits speaking of law as if it were a game of marbles. She stood apart from them, not shrinking, not asking leave to take up space. Atticus noticed the way people looked twice at them when they stood side by side. He noticed, too, that she did not flinch. “You’ve more courage than most men I know,” he told her once, adjusting his spectacles with a faint smile. “I hope you won’t hold that against me.” Years later, he would bring her home to Maycomb, where the red dirt stained cuffs and reputations alike, and where anything that was not pure white was not right, said low and said often.

By summer, their house hummed with the steady rhythm of family life. She kept the windows open to catch what little breeze the season offered, and the scent of starch and simmering vegetables drifted out toward the porch. Calpurnia moved through the rooms with quiet authority, shepherding Jem and Scout through their lessons and their mischief alike. Atticus watched it all from his chair in the evenings, long legs crossed, a book resting in his lap. He was accustomed to the town’s ways. Men would nod to him in the street and later mutter slurs about the woman on his arm. They would ask him to settle a land dispute or draft a will, their voices polite as Sunday, as though their words of the night before had not existed. “They’ll come knocking soon enough,” he said one afternoon, glancing toward the road. “Pride don’t keep a man from needing a lawyer.” His tone was mild, but there was no mistaking the truth in it.

When he agreed to defend Tom Robinson, the air in Maycomb seemed to thin. Conversations stopped outright when his wife entered a store. Children repeated what they heard at supper tables. Scout came home with fists clenched and eyes bright with fury. Atticus knelt before her, voice firm. “You can’t fight every child who uses a bad word,” he said. “If you did, you’d never have time for anything else.” He did not soften it. He did not pretend it would pass quickly. At the kitchen table, he folded his hands and looked across at his wife, the lamplight catching in his glasses. “It’s going to get worse before it settles,” he said quietly. “Folks don’t care for their comfort being disturbed.”

The night the mob gathered at the jail, lanterns swinging and boots grinding into gravel, Atticus stood alone beneath the dim light. He faced them as he faced a jury, calm and unyielding. Afterward, when the house was dark and the children finally asleep, he sat heavily in his chair. The lines around his mouth had deepened. He called Jem into the room the next morning. “While I’m away, you look after things here,” he told his son. “Not with temper. With sense.” To Scout, he said, “I expect you to mind your teachers, no matter what’s said.” His gaze lingered a moment longer than usual before he turned back to his papers. Outside, a wagon rattled past, and somewhere down the street a voice carried sharp and ugly through the heat. The summer stretched ahead, long and restless, and Maycomb was watching.