“You leave us alone,” I scream at him. “You leave us alone.” My nose drips from crying.

“I swear, Maple, I mean no harm,” he says. He backs out slow, moving like I’m a wild thing he’s trying not to startle.

When he’s gone, I sink to the floor, my breath in hiccups, my own hand over my mouth.

Chapter 43

Henry

It’s like there are two worlds. The one with Sarah and me alone together, and the other one with everybody else in it. Every morning I wake up happy because she’s next to me, but Maple and Red and the others wake up hateful, pointing fingers and calling names. They’ve stopped blaming her for Ralph Mulch attacking her, but they’re still blaming her for me.

When we climb down the coach house ladder, Annie’s hovering just outside by the forge, no doubt checking if Sarah’s here. When she sees us together, she turns and scampers over toward the kitchen house and the house slave cabins, ready to report what she’s seen to the others, I’ll bet. I pull Sarah in close, wanting to give her strength for the day to hold up against their meanness.

“Shout if you need me,” I say. “For anything.”

“I’ll be fine. All they do is look at me sideways.”

It’s not true. They call her names and get in her way, but they don’t when I’m near. I hate letting her from my side.

I watch her walk down to the kitchen house, ready to take her instructions from Maple, who’ll no doubt give them with a slathering of spite. Then I collect the morning’s iron, lay to a bucket of water, and set my wood around yesterday’s embers. I reach for my bellows, but they’re not where I keep them. I can’t find them anywhere, though I had them yesterday and put them away last night. Like I do every night. It’s just been me and Sarah here since then.

And Annie this morning.

After the whipping she got for stealing I can’t see her doing it again, but my bellows are missing, and she was over here. I need them to work, so I make my way to over to her cabin, for a look around.

She must have seen me pass, because not long after I go in, she turns up huffing.

“What you doing, Mister Taylor? Ain’t nothing here for you.”

“Did you take my bellows?”

She makes a face like I’ve lost my mind. “No, sir. Not me. I didn’t take nothing.”

I keep looking.

“I’m telling you, it ain’t here. You must’ve forgot where you put it.”

“I need them back,” I say. “I can’t work without them.” I search under her bed and feel around in her mattress. It’s lumped with bits of cloth, probably taken from Missus Johnson. I’d wager Sarah’s green headscarf is in there. I run my hand between the mattress and the wall and there, shoved into the crack are my bellows, pressed as flat as they go and covered with her blanket.