Eliza? She eighteen, no longer a girl. Turn into a proper young woman. As she grow, she take on more and more of Stella features. Sometimes I see her cooking over the fire and I have to look twice, because is Stella I see and I have to stop meself from crying out. But Eliza is not like Stella. She still have a softness, a kindness bout her, even after everything that happen. She working in the kitchens, she smart, could do better, turn head house slave like Stella but, she tell me, she happy working where she is. She can always get enough food to feed Betsy, her baby girl, and is too much trouble all that head house slave business. The father is the bookkeeper from Chesterfield plantation, the one next to Ginger Hill, only take a few hours walk to get there. Betsy is what backra call a quadroon, three-quarter white. She going have a good life ahead of her, when she come of age, be able to catch a man ‘above her station’. Eliza always begging the bookkeeper to buy her, keep her close, but I tell her is just a dream. The bookkeeper favour plenty slave women, not just her, so that not going happen anytime soon.

Sammy is a man now, have twenty-three years under him feet, make me twenty-six years feel old. With no Stella and no Massa between us, we no longer enemy, but the divide still the same. It bring on sadness knowing we never going be close. I come to accept him marked by fate too, and the path him travelling on going move him further and further away.

Getting sold to work at Ginger Hill plantation turned out good for him. Busha Annand have many visitors from the Mother Country. Many more than Massa used to, so Sammy get to learn all the proper ways of serving. Is the making of him, become a prized house slave, and Busha Annand finally persuaded to sell him off to the highest bidder. A merchant by the name of Thomas Wallace. Massa Thomas buy Sammy for sixty-eight pounds sterling, take him to work for him in Black River. A big port town in the south, bout a half-day ride from Ginger Hill. That river, it come from way up in the mountains in Cockpit Country where Robert McKellar come from, winding its way down to the sea. Massa Wallace buy Sammy to look after him guests proper, specially the ones that visit often from cross the seas. Eliza and me, we sorry to see him go, see how our little family broken apart again, but we know Stella would be proud to see him prosper.

Seem like in the end, getting sold turn out good for me too.