I bend down and kiss her. I don’t want to own her. I just want her to be mine.

She wraps her arms around my waist, and I sigh, feeling the weight of her body against me. The disjointed clanking that’s been vibrating inside me since she found me making those chains and shut me out is finally quiet. I pull in a deep breath of sweet air. A lungful of Sarah.

She tucks her cheek on to my chest and it’s like all the tightness inside me is melting away. I rub her back with one hand and hold her close with the other.

“You can’t never stop a whipping like that again,” she says into my chest.

“I know,” I tell her.

She looks up at me. “You made it worse for Annie, and if that’d been me—”

I shake my head at her. “It won’t be you. It will never be you.”

“Henry—”

“That would kill me.”

She raises her eyebrows at me and stares hard. “Starving ain’t the only dying we know about.”

“Sarah,” I say. I don’t want her to bring up our argument.

She pulls back from me and says, “You remember you told me about your family back home? And how you worked the land but didn’t own it?”

I run my hands up and down her arms. I wish she would stop talking and just let me hold her, but I say, “Yes. I remember.”

“That man who owned everything, would he come by your hut sometimes?”

“Lord Edwards lives in England,” I say. “He’s only been to Ireland once. Another man manages it for him. A little like an overseer, I suppose.”

“Then imagine he sent that other man to take your brother from your hut because your Lord Edwards got a mind to sell him. Maybe he got debts, or too many hands, or the overseer’s been telling lies on him, saying he’s trouble. Or your Lord from England just got a notion to, ’cause he don’t need a reason.”

“They couldn’t sell us,” I say. “They could starve us. And take the land back. Leave us homeless with nothing.”

“But imagine he could,” she says. “And imagine your daddy tries to stop them from taking his boy and gets himself whipped bloody.”

I know this happens here, but it sounds like a new horror when it could be Dermot getting taken from our home, and Da being whipped. It’s a terrible thought.

“And imagine your Lord Edwards comes up from England that one time, and sees your sister and decides to take her for the night. When your daddy stands in his way he’s whipped again, and this time it’s weeks before he can walk. Then, as extra punishment, your Lord Edwards keeps your sister for a week instead of for a night, and when he comes back he takes your momma, just to show your daddy his place. To show all of you. And when he don’t like the look of your stink eye, showing him just what you think of him, he sells you too. One day you’re hoeing in the fields and the next someone puts shackles around your wrists and ankles and an iron collar around your neck, leading you God knows where. Only thing you know is that your family and your home is gone forever.” She reaches up to cup my face. “I know you been through a hard, hungry life,” she says. “I want you to understand that slave suffering is a different thing. When somebody owns you, there ain’t nothing they can’t do to you.”