“Yes,” Patricia affirms. “I know this one well, actually. This is early June, 1865. A couple months after the Battle of Appomattox, but before Juneteenth. We need to move closer. Mary is almost here.” She takes a step forward, but I hang back, shaking my head, because I can guess the source of the suffocating, terrifying copper smell: blood. Lots of it.

When Patricia notices that I’m not behind her, she takes in my expression, and sympathy falls across her face. “It’s all right to be scared, Bree. Like many true things, this is awful, and hard. If it helps, Abby endures, with the help of Mary. She lives a long life after this night.”

It does help, some.

“Won’t they see us?” I ask, watching as Louisa squeezes a wet cloth into a nearby bucket, worry etched across her brown face. Even in crisis, her hands are steady.

“No. Louisa’s spirit brought us here, but what’s past is past. We are observers only. She can’t see or hear us, and neither can anyone else.”

I gnaw on my cheek. “But why did she choose this memory?”

“You’ll see. Come.” Patricia offers me her hand, and I take it.

As we approach, the rickety door of the cabin swings inward and a young, dark-skinned woman wearing a deep beige dress sweeps into the room, focus pulling her elegant features tight. “What happened?”

Louisa exhales in relief, pushing herself to standing. The whole front of her dress is streaked with drying blood. “That rat-faced boy Carr got to her.”

Louisa moves back as Mary steps forward. She has a bag made from cloth in one hand, and as she kneels, she starts working on the knot at the top. “What’d he say she do?”

A sneer mars Louisa’s pretty features. “Same old mistruths. Gettin’ uppity with some white woman on the street, talking back to her or some such nonsense.”

Mary’s got the bag open now and spreads it out over the dirt. Inside are bundled herbs, small green glass bottles of murky liquids, and some plants freshly pulled from the ground, moist soil still clinging to their spindly roots. Her mouth twists in a grimace. “Bet you that boy’s got a different story every time he tells it.”

Louisa’s so furious her fists shake at her sides. “Chloe said she ran to the garrison for help when I told this girl over and over that they ain’t here to protect us, they here to keep us in line. Carr dragged her out.” Louisa’s eyes turn hard as flint. “Left her there on the ground, passed out from the whip. Me and Chloe carried her back here, and she woke up halfway. I been keeping her calm, but—”

“Mary?” Abby’s voice is a reedy whisper.

“I’m here, Abby,” Mary assures the other woman while her hands work at the materials on the floor.