“I’m glad you liked it, Sarah.” He says my name like it’s a precious thing.

I step in close to him. I reach up and take his face in my hands and I kiss him. I don’t care about Bessie warning me to keep my distance. I don’t think about all those people who’ve got something to say about me and Henry. I know he ain’t going to be around here forever, but I kiss him because I want to, and I keep kissing him because I want to. In a minute I got to do a mountain of things I don’t want to do, but right now I’m doing this because I choose it.

When I step back, I’m wet all up and down my front where we been pressing together. He’s breathing hard and he’s glowing, and I’m amazed that I have the power to do that to him.

We come out of the woods hand in hand, but as soon as we get clear of the trees we get a cold taste of Virginia reality. Propped against the old sycamore tree, the overseer sits slumped with a bottle of hooch. As we step out into the open of the plantation, he sees us. Our fingers linked together. The flower in my hair. My feet stop moving. I can’t get no breath.

We drop our hands and put some space between us.

“Just keep walking,” Henry says.

I do. I try. But he’s seen us. “Henry,” I say.

“It’ll be all right.” He steers us away from Master Mulch, toward the stables and the yard, and I stumble along beside him. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I look back and the overseer’s got his eye right on me, putting a fear in me that sits deep in my bones. Henry’s jaw is clamped so tight he’s cramping up his whole neck, and now I’m scared of what Henry’s going to do to the overseer, and of what the law’s going to do to Henry once he’s done it.

Chapter 35

Henry

The overseer is a shiftless man. He sits atop his Quarter Horse with his whip coiled at his hip, his pistol glinting in the sun, and his back to the workers in the field. His focus, I see as I draw near, is trained up the hill—to where Sarah and Thomas feed grass to the horses.

My arms are full of hoes and shovels I’ve been mending and making that I carry into the cotton shed. When I come out, he’s still watching Sarah. The water runners, four children too young to pick, but too old to be allowed to sit idle, have brought buckets of water for the workers’ water break. They stand holding the buckets, waiting for him to give permission for the field hands to drink.

I approach him without a clear idea what to say, but I’ll not have him lurking around hounding Sarah. If he has a quarrel, it’s with me.