Tom knew the answer. Moving with the same passive blindness, he had fathered a child by a black employee in her twenties. And though Viola had loved him as surely as Sally Hemings must have loved Jefferson, Tom had to wonder how much choice either woman had really had in their circumstances. He hated to think of himself as a man who during difficult times had offered a troubled woman only temporary comfort and not real help. He was no Thomas Jefferson in intellectual terms, but that probably meant only that Jefferson had found some more facile way to justify actions that went against the grain of all he had championed during his life.

Rubbing his hands together against the cold, Tom recalled a quote from Peggy’s distant cousin, Robert Penn Warren: “And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.”

An image of Penn rose in Tom’s mind, but he pushed it away. What of my other son? he thought in desolation. I don’t even know him, much less love him. My Sally Hemings is dead, and my own dark descendant wants only to see me die behind bars. Would Jefferson’s bastards have wanted the same, if they’d had the power to bring about that result? Would they have punished the man who gave them life but not his name? Tom knew one thing: he would not compound his sin by following Jefferson’s example of neglect. If he lived through this nightmare, he would take steps to ensure that his illegitimate child would never suffer in the same way, no matter how much he might hate his father.

Tom felt his keenest guilt over his firstborn son, and all those loved ones who he knew would risk everything to save him. Walt Garrity was risking his life now, though he had a wife waiting for him at home. Melba would have stayed all night, knowing full well that she might die because of it. Tom couldn’t bear to think of what Penn and Peggy would give up to save him, and he had no intention of letting them do so. To that end, he had struck out on his own, separated himself from the lawful community of men, because he believed he had one chance to keep his family intact. The death of the state trooper had complicated matters, but one chance remained. The attempt might cost him his life, but Tom had risked his life before, and only for his country, not his family. This time, if he died, he would do so knowing he hadn’t died in vain.