A teenage Jo sat patiently on a plastic chair in the waiting room. She'd managed weeks alone before anyone noticed, but when the unpaid bills started stacking up, people began asking questions. Eventually, they'd realized that the girl was living by herself in that ramshackle house, no parent in sight, and had reported the orphan to Child Protective Services.

How sad, they all whispered behind her back, momma dead and now her daddy just up and left her alone. She knew she was better off alone, though, if only they'd leave her to her business.

Foster care was where she was inevitably headed; no distant relatives would prove to be her savior now. She'd be shipped off to live with strangers who didn't understand her, and whom she didn't trust.

Burying her head in her hands, Jo wondered if things had played out differently, could she have avoided this situation altogether. Probably not, she accepted, a thirteen-year-old running around solo would have eventually drawn some unwanted attention, even in Harlan County.

"Get up, girl. We're leaving," called a gruff female voice. Jo slowly lifted her head from her hands to find Helen Givens standing in front of her, arms crossed, and a knowing smile on her face.

The Givens' and the Taylors had been friendly before the passing of her mother, and she was fairly certain her father and Arlo had run a scam or two together in the past, but she couldn't fathom why the older woman would be here now. "Why? Where are we going?" She asked quietly, remaining motionless in her flimsy chair.

"You're coming home with me," Helen answered simply, before exiting the waiting room, and Jo followed after her quickly.

The car ride back to Harlan was tensely silent. Jo couldn't decide what this new development meant for her future. Had Helen agreed to babysit her till the state found her a suitable foster family, or was this something more?

Withdrawing one hand for the steering wheel, Helen carefully laid her palm on the younger girl's knee, but Jo instinctively flinched away from the unexpected touch.

Sighing sadly, Helen promised, "you get nothin' to be afraid of anymore," but drew her hand back all the same. The last remaining Givens matriarch always seemed to know more than she let on.

A faint buzzing tried to shake Jo from the dream, from the memory, but she was defiant. Burrowing her face further into the surface she was resting upon, she willed the noise to cease, to allow her the opportunity to drift back into the past.

"Jo, that's yours," a hoarse voice whispered above her. That's right, Tim had stayed the night, and the surface she was currently nestled into were the firm planes of his chest. She merely groaned and squeezed her eyes shut at the statement.

"That's the fourth call in a row," Tim observed, his voice, while still husky from sleep, sounded more awake now.

Lifting herself off his person, Jo blindly groped around for her cellphone on the bedside table. "Hello?" She answered tiredly, not bothering to check who it was that had disrupted her slumber.

"Jo..." Raylan's voice rang uncertainly through the line.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" She asked, though the clock next to her bed told her it was just after 4 AM.

"I know," he admitted wearily. "It's just..." Again, Raylan wavered in his speech on the other line. He was never one to be at a loss for words, and the realization had her sitting up in bed concerned. "Helen's dead," he finally announced after a heavy pause.

Jo's mind began running at a mile a minute, but she settled on expelling an uneasy breath and said, "I'll head right down."

Throwing the sheets off her body, Jo mutely began dressing herself. Tim watched from his seated position in the bed as she wandered through the bedroom, into the bathroom, and back again, readying herself for the day. Her silence was deafening and worrying.

"Where are you going?" He finally asked as she stood in the middle of the bedroom, locking her watch into place around her wrist.

"Down to Harlan," she answered shortly. She wasn't looking at him, hadn't thrown so much as a glance in his direction since ending the phone call. If Jo was hard to read on a good day, she appeared almost empty now.

Leaning over to read the clock, Tim took in the early hour and questioned further, "at this time? Why?"

Jo halted in her movements and finally turned towards him. "Helen's dead. Can you let yourself out?" There was no inclination in her voice, no emotion lacing her tone. Everything about her was flat at that moment, from her expression to her posture. He nodded deftly in agreement, and she took her leave of the bedroom.

Raylan and Jo arrived at their childhood home in time. A look was shared, but no words were exchanged as they walked up the path leading to the front door in unison. A mass of emergency vehicles crowded the property.

Trooper Tom Bergen met them on the patio, but neither particularly listened to the words he offered. Inside the doorway sat a gurney carrying Helen's body in a brown bag. That was it, that's what was left of the motherly figure they both shared.

Raylan continued through the crime scene, observing, not as a grief-stricken nephew, but with the dissecting eyes of a lawman. However, Jo didn't follow. She wasn't interested in reveling in the tragedy, so, instead, she made her way upstairs. At the end of the hallway sat the door to her old bedroom. Turning the knob, she pushed the rickety door open to reveal the room behind.

Everything was as she'd left it. Her old hairbrushes lay on the dresser. Outdated clothing hung in the closet. A wrinkled poster of Dolly Parton sat on the wall, aged and yellowed by time.

The air held within the room was musty from disuse, but everything else remained the same. Jo hadn't lived in this house for several years, but everything was in its place, almost as if it had been awaiting her return.

"I know it isn't much," Helen confessed after showing a teenage Jo to her new room. There was a bed, covered in a worn pastel pink quilt, and a few pieces of furniture, but nothing extravagant. Some of her personal items littered the room, so they must have gone and collected those from her old house before bringing her here. "I want this to feel like your home," Helen continued, placing a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder.

This time, she didn't flinch away from the contact.

The air suddenly became too stifling in the old bedroom, so Jo wandered back downstairs to find Arlo and Raylan huddled in the living room. The former was loading bullets into his revolver and shells into his shotgun. "Who are you loading those bullets up for?" Raylan questioned, even though all three knew the obvious answer.

"You know damn well who," Arlo drawled in return.

"The Bennetts? You think it was the Bennetts?" Raylan surmised, collecting the dress for Helen's funeral in his hands.

"You killed Coover. Now your aunt is dead. You suppose that's a coincidence, lawman?" Arlo taunted.

"You've got your fair share of enemies too, Arlo," Jo defended, but her observation fell entirely on deaf ears.

"No, I don't suppose that's a coincidence," Raylan begrudgingly admitted. "So, you're gonna charge off, guns blazing, and kill 'em all? That it?"

"Not all," Arlo assured, his fingers never halting in their actions.

"Which ones?" Raylan shot back.

"Mags didn't come in here with no shotgun. And Doyle wouldn't do this kind of thing," Arlo assessed, pinning his prodigal son with a hard stare.

"So it's just Dickie you're after, then," Raylan concluded with a slight nod of the head.

There was still one particular detail about the previous night that bothered both Jo and Raylan, though. The latter simply voiced it first, "where were you? Huh? Where were you? I find it odd that she got killed at 2:00 in the morning. Where were you?"

Arlo immediately became defensive at the implication behind Raylan's words, "hell is that supposed to mean?"

Raylan's voice began to rise as he retorted, "I'm just wondering where you were."

Continuing to rack loads into the shotgun, Arlo explained, "Helen ain't dead because I wasn't here. She's dead because you killed one of theirs."

The notion that lifetime career criminals could still be such terrible liars spun around in Jo's head as she watched Arlo deflect question after question. "You still haven't told us where you were, Arlo," she voiced only to be ignored again by the feuding men.

"If you two cared at all about her, you'd be loading up your guns, too. All she did for you-" Arlo's insensitive muttering was cut short when Raylan and Jo began shouting in unison.

"I know exactly what she did for me! I certainly don't need to be reminded of it by you!" Raylan barked.

"Of course I cared about her! You think I didn't appreciate everything she did for me?" Jo seethed in turn.

Knocking on the front door interrupted their rapidly escalating argument, and behind the screen stood Ava and Boyd Crowder. Jo wasn't interested in hearing anything the pair had to say at that moment, so when Arlo ushered them in with open arms, Jo exited the door while they entered.

Standing in the yard, she could hear the blood rushing through her ears as she scornfully observed the Givens family's gravestones. She'd never been gifted her own, a relentless reminder that Jo wasn't actually kin, no matter the time spent with Arlo, Helen, or Raylan. She'd always be an outsider, forever intruding upon their dysfunctional family simply because her own had abandoned her.

Raylan joined her sometime later, and the two stood in silence while considering the headstones.

Eventually, Jo interrupted the quiet to ask, "what're we gonna do now?"

Raylan paused briefly, but answered with a harrowing sigh, "whatever needs to be done."