There’s two ways to keep a child when you’re held a slave. You can hold her precious, right close to your heart, pouring all your love into her because you know you could lose her any day. Or you can hold her loose, not loving too deep or caring too much or getting too close, knowing that you could lose her any day. Two sides of the same fear.

When Freddy couldn’t stop that devil from coming after her night after night, and couldn’t stand to hear her screams and see her pain, seems he learned to love the second way. He held her loose and ran. A surviving choice.

I feel the blades of grass poking into me as I dig my fingernails into the dirt. I can’t protect her. I can’t help her. All I can try to do is love her loose.

Chapter 68

Henry

Aaron Newman, the widowed Quaker in the green house, is a cunning man for being so Godly. It takes some convincing to get him to leave his farm to help me, but once he’s decided, he comes up with a scheme that I think will work. Even shaves his Quaker beard for it. He agrees to be at Jubilee in two days’ time, but I can’t keep myself from worrying. I’m trusting in a stranger, but I’m out of options. And I’m running out of time.

I set out before dawn walking to Jubilee. I mean to get there by late afternoon, before the Quaker shows up in the evening, to tell Sarah what we’ve got brewing. When I’m close, I cut through the woods to be sure not to run into Matthew Johnson. That would be about the surest way to ruin the plan.

I’m light on my feet as I scramble through the trees growing close and thick, approaching the plantation from the forest behind it. Ahead is the wildflower clearing and then the river and then Jubilee Plantation. The sun beats at me, burning me, though I’ve had all summer to toughen up to it. I keep pulling my shirt off for the heat, and back on for the burn. I’m thinking about how nice it will be to dip into the river as I walk into the wildflower clearing.

A figure steps into the field from the other side and my first hope is that it’s Sarah, but immediately it’s clear it’s not. It’s a stocky white man with a broad-brimmed hat. He takes another step in, and there’s no mistaking him. Mulch. The overseer sees me too and his face pulls into a sneer. I feel the hatred bubbling up in me as my nostrils flair.

“Taylor,” he says.

“What’re you doing here?” I spit.

“I’ve just been over at Jubilee. Thought I’d take this here shortcut back to town and look at here who I find.”

My muscles tense. “You’ve no business around there,” I tell him.

“Turns out I do,” he says. “Johnson wants to hire me back. Imagine that.”