“Lord, have mercy, this garden’s fit to burst.” Bessie shuffles through a row of carrots with bushy green stalks that spill into the path, brushing at her ankles and tangling in her toes. “Can’t a body hardly walk.” She wrinkles her nose and sniffs at the air. “Is that onions?”

“They keep the slugs away,” I say, sitting back on my heels.

“Well, how ’bout that.” She feels through the vegetables with her feet. “You got peas in here?”

“Yonder,” I say, pointing, like she could see it.

“Master used to love my peas. Used to say I make the best peas in the whole state of Virginia.”

“Bet they were something else.”

“Not half as good as my cornbread. Now, that truly was the best in the county. Master’s momma won a church prize for my cornbread once. That’s how good it was.” She bends over to touch the vegetables where she stands, running her hands through the leaves.

“Bessie, you need something from me?”

“Are these here collards?” She feels up and down on a wide flat leaf.

“Turnips,” I say. “You looking for something special?”

“Shame we ain’t got peach trees. We could make peach cobbler every day of the week if we had a tree. Lord, that Master Thomas loves himself some cobbler, don’t he?”

“Sure do,” I say. I go back to my weeding while I wait for her to work up to what she wants. Chickweed, cleavers and finger-grass keep trying to come up with the vegetables, but I got them just about beat. Then I check the bean rows, tying up the ones that don’t want to cling right with a length of string.

“I hear you gave that blacksmith a taste.”

I should have figured that’s what this was. “You been talking to Red?”

“He came by this morning, checking on Ben.”

I wrap a bean vine around the pole and tie it, though it don’t much need tying, waiting for her to say her piece.

“Nothing good can come out of that.”

“I just gave the man some cobbler,” I say. The strings slip out of my hand and I crouch to pick them up.

“Red’s been sweet on you since you got here, Sarah. You want to bring someone cobbler, you think about bringing it to him. He’d make you a good husband.”

I twirl the string in my hands, tangling it. “Henry Taylor’s the only reason Master Thomas got on that horse. The way I see it, he earned that cobbler. Red don’t have a thing to do with it.” It’s the truth of the matter, but not the heart of it. I move to the far side of the garden against the brick wall, away from her, and pick off stray leaves from the tomato plants.

“I’m telling you, folks take meaning in a thing.”

“Ain’t you got some spinning you need to be doing?”

She walks the last stretch up to me and puts her hand to my shoulder. “You been spending time with him by the horse field, at the coach house, daytime, evening time. It’s more than Red and Zeek that’s seen you.”