Bessie reaches out feeling my shoulder, my neck, my jaw, my mouth. “You ain’t gonna stop till you’re both hanging from a tree.”

I pull away from her pawing at me and cross to the door. Outside the sun’s coming up east, peeling back the dark.

“I need to get into the field,” I say. “First light’s already come.”

Samson leans back in his chair. “Ain’t no overseer down there now,” he says. “Master don’t check the field till he eats breakfast. We’ll be on over there by then.”

I go to the cotton shack by the fields and find a large burlap bag that I tie to my waist. The end of it tangles with my feet when I walk. I take myself off to the far end of a row of cotton where a few others have gathered. I reckon we’re the cautious ones who can’t afford to be caught out if Master comes down first thing after all.

I pluck at the white wooly bloom, but the cotton don’t come out clean. When I pick at the clumps left in the dry hull, the sharp points of the pod stab at my fingers. I pull them away, shaking my hand and sucking at the blood drops.

I work down the row, hunched and slow. My near-empty bag seems even bigger than when I tied it on.

In the time it takes Samson and Clover and Callie May to get out to the field, my back is hurting and my fingers are raw. And in a little more time, when Master comes out and checks on us, they’ve already picked as much as I have. It’s going to be a long and painful week.

Chapter 52

Maple

When I go up to brush Miss Martha’s hair, she’s waiting on me, drawn up tight and tall, with smoke near about pouring out of her ears. “Was it my husband who told you about my father’s plans?”

Here we go.

“Were you trying to have me go behind his back?”

I think about lying, but she already knows, so I give her a corner of the truth wrapped up in honey words.

“You told me enough times I should never keep secrets from you, Miss Martha. Didn’t seem right not to say something.”

“I see.” She takes up pacing the room.

“You want me to start keeping secrets, ma’am?”

“Of course not, Maple. But you should have told me the whole story. We’ve stumbled into a real hornet’s nest.”

I make my face go blank and stand beside the dressing table, picking up the hairbrush, waiting for her to sit.

“Father is feuding with Matthew. And he won’t hear sense from the likes of me. Apparently, I should concern myself with matters appropriate for my sex.” Her nostrils flare. She looks like her momma when she’s fired-up angry.

“Seems to me,” I say with a voice smooth as silk, “it’s a woman’s place to be looking out for her family.”