The horse nuzzles into his palm, taking the apple. Thomas turns to me and beams.

I smile at him, and then at Sarah, but she refuses to look at me. Her hair is tucked into the green headscarf I gave her and I’m longing to have things between us like they were the night I gave it to her. I need her to forgive me and understand that it’s my living, and I don’t choose what they hire me to make.

“Afternoon, Sarah,” I say.

“We’d best be getting back, Master Thomas,” she says.

“But we still have apples left.” He reaches into the bag to show her. “Here,” he says handing me an apple. “You can feed them too.”

I take the fruit and sidle up next to Sarah.

We feed the horses in silence and when the bag is empty she tells Thomas again that it’s time to go.

“It’s such a fine day,” I say. “Maybe Thomas wants to get on a horse. What do you say, Thomas?” I pat the smooth neck of the brown mare in front of me.

“Yes,” he cries, jumping up with excitement.

“Take care he doesn’t hurt himself,” Sarah says. She turns from us and strikes off away from the paddock.

“Aren’t you staying?”

She glares at me over her shoulder, but she stops walking. “You can take time whenever you like to do what you want, but I can’t.”

“Come on, Henry,” Thomas calls from the mounting block, though the horse is on the other side of the enclosure.

I take a step closer to Sarah and lower my voice, “I don’t get to choose my jobs, same as you. I make what they tell me, if I like it or not. It’s how I survive.”

“You do it for money.”

“Making money is surviving. It’s food and medicine, and coal to burn in the winter, and a home to live in. Money is life, and I know because I’ve been poor. Being poor will kill you like it killed my whole family, and thousands more besides.”

“You’re a free man. You could make something else for money. If you make chains, it’s ’cause you choose to make them.”

“Would you have me starve?” I say.

She’s stares at me with the fiercest look I’ve yet seen on her, puffing angry breaths through her nose with me doing the same. “If you make shackles and chains for money,” she says, “it makes me wonder what else you’d do for money.”

In the humid air my clothes stick to my skin. His clothes. The dead man from New York. I shake my head. Clear the memory. “I need to live.”

“Henry, I’m ready,” Thomas calls from the block.

“Master Thomas’s waiting on you,” she says. She turns her back to me and storms down the hill.

“I need to live,” I repeat to myself, watching her go. I tamp down my frustration and dig my hands into my pockets. Behind me, Thomas calls for me to get the horse.