I get to Culpeper the next day and find the green house easy enough. A moonfaced man opens the white door. He’s shaved his beard to right up under his chin so that his face looks like it’s poking out from a wreath of black hair. The man looks me up and down and takes a peek over my shoulder. He doesn’t speak a word. Just raises his eyebrows at me to explain myself.

“Afternoon,” I say. “I’m looking for a woman who would have come here with two men.”

It takes him a while to respond to that, but he finally comes up with, “I live here alone.”

“I don’t suppose I care who you’re living with,” I tell him. “I want to know if you’ve seen the woman.”

“Why have thou come to me?” he asks.

It’s a strange way of talking, for sure, and it hits me then that he’s a Quaker. A sect famous for being against slavery. I guess he doesn’t rightly know if he can trust me.

I check over my shoulder to make sure no one’s sneaking up on us, paranoid, and of course the road is clear. “They were told they’d be safe here. Second house coming into Culpeper. Green with a white door. They escaped on Monday,” I tell him. “A woman with two men.”

The Quaker stands like a goddamn mute, taking in my clothes. Or maybe he’s looking for a gun in my breeches.

“I’m a friend,” I tell him.

He says nothing to that so I push on. “She stands yea tall,” I stretch my hand out level with my chin. “She’s got a slight frame, but she’s stronger than she looks. She has a wide face with a narrow chin and round eyes and soft lips and a scar over her left eyebrow no bigger than an ant. She’s got a crooked tooth on the bottom. Right here,” I point in my own mouth. “And she’s got a hint of a dimple on her left cheek when she smiles.”

He looks me in the eye and then steps aside to let me in. Pulling out a chair at a rough planked table, he sits and nods at a second chair for me to join him.

“You love this woman,” he says. “God help thee.”

I feel myself reddening. I hadn’t meant to be so transparent.

“Many abolitionists who’d risk life and limb to help people out of bondage would take a dim view to the idea of the two of you.”

I know it’s true. I could still deny it, but instead I say, “But not you?”

“But not me,” he says.

“I’m taking her west,” I tell him.

He looks at me gravely, like a chastising father. “West?” he says. “Not north?”

“West,” I say. Out where things are less formed. Less settled. More possible. “There’s a business opportunity I’m joining in Independence, where all the pioneers leave from.”

He strokes his beard thinking about that a moment and then says, “Independence might not be far enough.”