Before England, Hagar had seemed happy enough. She used to sing in the kitchen as she worked. After, she was different, distracted and silent. No one, not even Rosalie for all her watchfulness, took note. They were all sunk in their own grief. Why wouldn’t Hagar be the same? She’d loved Henry Byron, too.

No one stopped to wonder what Hagar’s narrow escape from death by smallpox might have meant to her. No one thought about what the freedom of England might have looked like to a slave in Maryland.

Father’s first response to her request was no. Absolutely, no. Mother needed her more than ever. Besides, it was in Hagar’s best interest to stay on the farm. “Why return to slavery?” he asked her, not noticing that she’d recently done exactly that. Here, on the farm, she was salaried and loved. It made no sense. He wouldn’t allow it.

Grandfather stepped in. “If you believe in freedom,” he told Father, which Father was always insisting he did, “you’ll agree this is Hagar’s choice to make.”

The last time Rosalie saw Hagar, she was riding away in the back of a cart, her back stiff and her face still, like a figure carved in wood. But she did not return to slavery. Instead, she ran.

Her absence wasn’t discovered for three days and by then, there was no tracing her. Dr. Bond demanded her full purchase price from Father, as he was the one who’d taken his eye off her.

Hagar was not the only missing slave Father was forced to buy. One day, Rosalie found a scratched metal plate, rectangular, with a number on it—37—and a broken chain looped through. It was in the barn, down among the hay bales. Rosalie had no idea what it was or how it could have gotten to the barn. She showed it to Grandfather, who said it was nothing for her to concern herself with. He took it from her and she never saw it again. She wouldn’t know for years that what she’d found was an ankle chain, the number meant to identify the man who wore it. She wouldn’t know for years that Grandfather had been helping slaves to freedom in Philadelphia, hiding them in the forest on the farm until they could be picked up and guided into Baltimore and beyond by the fugitive maroons.

Father would never have known about it either, except that one time Grandfather was caught and only Father’s money kept him out of jail.

—

In principle, Father disapproves of slavery, but not as strongly as Grandfather does. He was, on two occasions, a slave owner. He’d bought Joe Hall from Dr. Bond, asking Joe’s permission first, as if good manners could mitigate the evil of it. “Work hard for me for five years,” Father had said, “and I’ll free you.” And that’s what happened.