As she speaks, I can’t believe my own joy. I’m happy just to hear her saying things meant only for me to hear. Us.

Above us the clouds shift and hide the moon and around us the cicadas sing on.

It’s late and she’s tired, and I guess I am too, but I’m not ready for her to go yet. I lie on my back and ask her to join me. When she does, I wriggle closer to her until we’re side by side, hand in hand.

“Sarah, can I ask you something?”

“I guess so,” she murmurs.

I turn my head to hers and see her eyelids drooping. “Are you going to slap me if I kiss you?” I say it soft and quiet and close to her face.

She blinks a few times, becoming alert again. “If you kiss me?” she asks. She turns to look at me and I kiss her gently.

“Like that,” I say.

“I ain’t gonna slap you.”

“Good.” I reach up and stroke her cheek. “I’m going to kiss you then.”

She smiles at me. “You just did.”

I shake my head. “That was just for permission. This is the kiss.” I kiss her then. I let her feel my longing and my need, and when I’m afraid I’ve shown her too much I pull back. I search her face as her mouth slides to a shy grin.

“Was that the kiss?” she asks. “Or was you still practicing?”

I’m grinning too and I squeeze her hand because I can’t help myself. “That was it.”

“Well, I didn’t slap you.”

“No. You didn’t.”

I walk her back down the hill past the big house and over to the slave cabins. She’s been moved from Thomas’s floor to a pallet in Bessie’s cabin. We stop outside the door. We.

“I have something for you,” I say. I’m bashful, though I want to be bold. I ease a green scarf out of my pocket and offer it shyly.

She takes it in both hands and strokes it. “You get this for me?”

I nod. “I was in town and I saw it, and I just thought…”

“I ain’t never had nothing this soft before,” she says, and caresses it to her cheek.

I feel ten feet tall. She looks up at me with gratitude and affection and lifts on to her toes to kiss me on my cheek.

“Thank you, Henry.”

Then she ducks into the cabin and I’m left floating in the clouds.

Chapter 24

Sarah

I been waiting weeks to find the right time to ask, or else to find the courage, but, come one Saturday, I do. Missus is in as good a mood as I’m likely to find her, fed with her favorite food, sitting in her favorite parlor that I done cleaned three times over when it weren’t even dirty, so she don’t have cause to say no.

I knock at the door and come slinking on in. “Sorry to bother you, Missus, but can I ask you something, ma’am?”