“Red!” I hear Matthew Johnson calling from the house. “Red!” He sounds agitated.

I tense as feet pound past the cabin door. Red’s voice carries back to me as he hurries on. “You call me, Master?”

I keep listening into the quiet, but when there’s nothing else to hear, my mind goes back to Sarah. The main thing is, we’re getting out of here. I close my eyes and see her. Soon I will lay down with her every night and wake up with her every morning. We’ll find some land and stake a claim and we’ll plant and harvest and raise a family. No richer man ever lived than that.

I hear fast feet running outside. Light feet, like a woman’s. Like Sarah’s. I sit up with a mind to going out to have a look when she comes bursting through the door.

“We did it,” she says. She’s breathless.

My brain stutters. “Do you mean?” I don’t dare hope. I know the plan has failed. But she’s beaming. “Are you saying?”

She nods. “And we have Maple to thank. Cruel, hard-hearted, bitter Maple.”

I don’t know what she means by thanking Maple, but I know what she’s saying. I jump up like I never even heard of broken ribs. I grab her and twirl her and feel nothing but joy.

Sarah is free. Or as good as. A wave of elation and relief hits me. With the transfer of ownership papers, she became mine as soon as Matthew Johnson sold her to the Quaker. Now we can go to the courthouse for her free papers.

We collect her few things from under her pallet. The bracelet I made her that she stopped wearing for fear of Johnson seeing it, and the pressed flowers of her wedding bouquet.

“They’ll be crumpled on the road,” I say.

“I won’t leave them in this place,” she says. She folds them into the pocket of her skirt. “I wish I’d gotten my green headscarf back from Annie.”

“Leave it,” I say. “We’ll get you a new one. We’ll get you a hundred new ones.”

We go to the coach house, her walking normally and me skirting behind the trees in case Johnson’s come out to bid her farewell. He hasn’t. Red’s in there hitching up the coach and Aaron Newman’s helping him do it. I can tell from the tightness of the Quaker’s shoulders that he’s eager to leave. And I see from the stiffness of Red’s movements that he’s upset.

He has his back to us and, when he finishes, he steps away from the horse and dips his head. Sarah walks up to him while I hang back in the shadows by the door.

“Take care of yourself, Red,” she says.

He reaches over and hugs her.

“It ain’t right,” I hear him say. “You ain’t no witch.”

“It’s all right, Red.”

“I killed that toad.”

“I’m gonna be just fine.”

“What’s he talking about?” I say.

Red whips around to see me standing there, shock and confusion playing across his face. He looks from Sarah to me and back again.