I cross over to my own pallet and lift the corner, laying the flower Henry put in my hair and my clutch of wildflowers beside the iron bracelet. Bessie tips her head my way so I know she’s heard me come in, but when she speaks it’s to her sons.

“You think Master’ll let me come visit you all when I go free?” she asks.

“Course, Momma,” says Samson. “Course he will.”

I never heard of no freed slave coming and going around a plantation, keeping everybody longing for freedom, but I keep my tongue.

“You could ask him about that,” Callie May says with her out-loud words, but the twist and pull of her face says, somebody’s got to stop lying to this old woman.

I stand to go, leaving Bessie with her family, when Callie May says, “Maybe Sarah knows someone you can stay with when you leave here.” Callie May darts her eyes over to where I’ve lain my flowers under my pallet.

It about knocks my breath out that she knows I’ve been with Henry. Silence slides around the room as they wait for me to say something. Clover’s little girl wakes in the stillness and climbs on to her momma’s lap. She sucks her thumb and closes her eyes with her head on Callie May’s chest.

“Don’t you all know anybody?” I say.

Bessie reaches for Clover’s hand. “Everybody I got’s right here on this plantation.”

“Don’t you worry about that, Momma,” Samson says. “You can go into town and hire out.”

Callie May glares at him. “Doing what? Who’s going to hire a blind old lady?”

“She can spin,” he says.

Callie May rocks her little girl and turns her face away.

“Momma, you got your freedom,” Clover says. “You been wanting that since you was old enough to know you didn’t have it.”

“It ain’t the same now. I done gave all my good years. I nursed that boy from a babe and when I get to where I’m no use to even my own self, he goes and turns me out like an old barn cow.”

“But, Momma, you’ll be free. You’ll die a free woman.”

She pats his hand. “I want to be buried next to your daddy. That’s all I want now.”

“Momma, you need to get your head right,” Samson says. “This ain’t just for you. This here’s for all of us.”

Callie May’s eyes bore into me over the top of her little girl’s head. “She’s just going to need a little help out there.”

I look from one expectant face to the other. “Maybe you could stay with,” I glance at the door, nervous of being overheard, “someone I know. For a little while.”

“Maybe she could,” Callie May says.

Bessie reaches for her cane and shuffles over to me. “You still seeing him?”

I don’t answer. Just watch their faces and sense the air getting thinner with Master’s threat pushing in from every corner of the cabin.