“I hear Master Nathaniel’s been visiting your daddy a lot,” I say.

“My cousin?”

“Un-hunh.” I know Master’d say it ain’t my place to tell her about this, but I don’t care. I ain’t telling her for him. I open my mouth and step right into that snake pit ’cause I got to try. “From what I hear, Master Nathaniel’s trying to get Master Jeremiah to give Belle Grove Plantation to him instead of to you.”

“That’s ridiculous. Where’d you hear that? Did Kitty say something when she came with my father? Or Zeek?”

I put my hands on my back and straighten up. We both hear it crack as I move.

“Could be it’s just talk. Could be there’s something behind it,” I say. “If you want to ask without asking, I’d see if he’ll give you Momma and Rose early. That ought to tell you what you want to know.”

Chapter 48

Henry

After three days of walking, I make it back to Jubilee just after the sun’s gone down, worn out, but shot through with joy. It’s too late to try and see Mister Johnson, but I’m burning to see Sarah, so I creep into her cabin where I find Bessie spinning at the wheel.

“Evening, Bessie,” I say.

She starts when she hears my voice. “I thought you was gone.”

“I came back for Sarah,” I say.

She cocks her head like a hound picking up a far-off noise she’s not sure she heard.

As the evening stretches on, I go from standing to sitting to pacing to peeking out the door. It feels like I’ve waited an eternity, and then, finally, she’s in the doorway. She rushes toward me and flings her arms around me. I catch her up around her waist and lift her off the ground, spinning her in tight circles. We’re laughing and she’s crying and my heart’s trying to tear out from my chest.

Neither one of us wants to spend our first night together again in a cabin with Bessie, so we slip through the far trees under the cover of darkness to the coach house and climb up to the hayloft. There never was such a sweet reunion.

I tell her about meeting Ennis and about the wagon wheels plan in Independence, Missouri. When I’ve told her everything and we settle down to sleep she starts crying. Quiet, so I won’t hear, with her head turned from me.

“What is it?” I ask her.

She shakes her head and pats my arm.

“If you don’t want to go to Missouri, we don’t have to go,” I say. “We can go wherever we like.”

She turns to me then, her face streaked wet.

“Please, Sarah. What’s wrong?”

She takes my cheeks in her hands, in that way that she has, and says, “Tomorrow, I’m gonna be free.”

We sleep clutching on to each other like two drowning souls. In the morning, the sun can’t get up fast enough for me. When she leaves to do her duties, I slip out to the river and wash myself, as much to make the time go by as to make myself more presentable. I circle around outside the property to the road, and I walk up the drive, up to the front porch, and I knock.