If she left, where would she go? Who would take her in and give her this? Everything. She scanned the vibrant green prairie stretched before her and the man who offered her a chance to have it all. Own it all.
In that instant, she found her life with the one who offered her the world.
“Yes.”
The moment Caroline said it, Lydia died.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
No one cheated Jackson.
He was too sharp, his mind too keen to be deceived. He picked up on every gesture, caught every glance, every fluster, every fidget. He prided himself on paying attention. It was the one thing he got from his old man and it served him well.
Especially at poker.
“I fold.” Rex threw his cards down and pounded the table, the sound echoing in the barn, bare besides Jackson’s rickety chairs and an old saddle shriveled up in the back corner. A thick layer of hay covered the floor, but it was the smell of animal flesh long gone that clung to the walls, forever reminding them just where they were.
Every few hands, Rex and Henry complained about the stench and inquired. Finally, Jackson gave in and confessed.
“You remember the ball, the two young ladies who were here? I introduced you. The one with the auburn hair. Big green eyes.”
“How could we forget?” Henry chuckled.
“Well, she’s with me.” He nodded his head toward the manor. “Staying with me.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right. Listen, I don’t want anyone to know. Not until we’re married. She’s a decent woman. So keep your mouths shut.”
“And she took a liking to you?” Rex nudged Henry in the ribs. “How’d you pull that off?”
“Fate, my friend.” Jackson smirked. “Fate.” He raked the coins together and stacked them in six neat rows. “A fool and his money.” He howled.
“And ain’t that just what we are.” Henry pushed two bits and a dime across the table. “Letting you pay us Monday and giving you the chance to win it back by week’s end. Sounds like a pair of fools to me.”
“Your day is coming.” The knot in Rex’s thin neck bobbed as he dragged a sip of hard cider. He shook his bony finger at Jackson. “I swear, one day you gonna lose big.”
“Don’t count on it.” Jackson heaped the cards into a pile toward Henry. “You’re up.”
“Oh no. I’ve had enough for one night.”
Henry laid his hands over his swollen belly and cleared his throat. “Enough cards, that is.” He laughed.
“What you talking about, Henry?” Rex leaned in. Jackson cared less. He was itching for another round.
“Well, boys, I found me a lady.” A rusty wide grin spread across his face under the straggliest moustache.
“What’s Mae think about that?”
Henry shrugged, spat a wad of tobacco in the glass jug at his side. “This one, she’s…” He raised his brows, whistled. “This one’s a keeper. Makes me remember why I’m a man.”
“You better watch yourself.” Jackson leaned back on his chair’s hind legs and rocked in the hay. “Don’t seem like Mae’s the easy type. Come on, boys, let’s play one more hand. I want all my money back.”
“You’re telling me something’s wrong with my needing something more? Something different?”
“I don’t know. Some men do. I can’t imagine I will. You’ve seen Caroline.” She was more than enough. He raked the cards together, shuffled them, and dealt with speed.
“What’s that suppose to mean? Mae ain’t no heifer.”
“No, ’course not.”
“This ain’t about her.” Henry snorted. “This is about me and what I need.”
“Right.” Jackson nodded. “I was just saying.”
“He’s saying Caroline ain’t the common woman.” Rex picked up his cards and groaned before curses slid out the corner of his mouth. “Caroline’s a beauty. Those green eyes, I mean, he ain’t lying.”
“Hey, hey! Enough.” Jackson threw a dime at Rex’s head. “Get your own lady.”
“I don’t care what he says. Believe me, Rex, whenever you do hitch up with one, you’re gonna always want something different.” Henry leaned in close. “Ever want one of them coons?”
“Get out!” Jackson flung his cards at Henry and slapped the table.
“Come on, now. Tell the truth.”
“Never.”
“You ain’t never thought about it?”
“Not ever.” Jackson squeezed his eyes shut. “Makes me sick just thinking about it. I don’t even want you to talk about it.”
“There’s some pretty ones out there.” Rex licked his lips. “I wouldn’t mind—”
“I’ve never seen one.” Jackson shook the image from his head. He’d never be so desperate. Pump a bullet through his own skull first if he had to.
“Well, maybe if I wasn’t with Mae. Maybe I wouldn’t need more if I had a woman like Caroline.”
Jackson stared at his bald friend and snickered. Right. Like he could be so lucky.
“Got some new men coming in the morning,” Jackson said one evening ten days after Caroline arrived. “Few slaves, few workers, so be careful walking the grounds.”
The last thing Caroline wanted was another slave.
Another Annie sneaking peeks at her in sideways glances, curtseying before her but cursing her the moment she walked away.
She tugged at the neckline of her beige chemise, stretching it loose, looser, and paced her bedroom until a plank on the wooden floor creaked long and eerie. The sound struck her and for a moment, she stopped to sit on the windowsill, gazing out at the grassy meadows two stories below.
When thoughts of John emerged, how he had walked with her, shown her the beauty of vegetation outside the colonial, she shut them out, shoved them down with new memories. The strolls, the dinners, the rides with Jackson.
Caroline walked over to her dressing table and sat. She picked up the brush and stroked the waves of her dark auburn hair, arranging a chignon at the base of her nape with steady hands. So easy now. She had done it countless times. She glanced at herself in the mirror. Pretty.
But something rose inside her. It was old, familiar, a flash of a feeling of who she had been. Sometimes it erupted so suddenly she didn’t have the chance to press it down like the hairs over her scar, no time to cover it with loose white powder, or tie it down with the lace of her corset. Sometimes it just was. Loose, untamed, boundless Blackness, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. When she fought it, a panic set in.
Brass bristles slipped from her hand and hit the floor. Creak… She startled and fought the urge to flee.
Stooped on the windowpane, Caroline watched Coloreds descend from a covered wagon. The last man in a dark cotton shirt and denim leapt from the side of the cart with one hand and joined a man in a straw hat standing, his back to her.
She froze when he turned.
A skin as dark and smooth as velvet.
Her fingers pressed against the glass, remembering, recalling the days of Midnight.
He walked with the other man toward the direction of her window, laughing, occasionally surveying his new surroundings with a glance. A dimpled face, a mouth of pearls she would never forget.
He had not run. Still a slave.
When sadness rose, she yanked it down under the folds of her satin dress. When love rose, she willed it to die under a White hand, a white lie against her heart.
She glanced down at the man below. He was staring at her. Standing there, alone, staring up at her.
He had seen her.
When fear rose, she snatched the curtain shut and walked away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Annie shuffled left, shuffled right, lugging the wooden bucket step by step until she reached the back porch of the Whitfield manor and set it down between her ashen legs. When the water settled two, maybe three, centimeters from the top, she smiled at the achievement. Very little was wasted trotting it down the hi
ll. The master would be proud.
She had no idea how so many slaves could take their work so lightly. Working for the master was like working for the Master Himself. If He was here, she would treat Him best she could, but since He wasn’t, she did what she could for the ones He placed over her. It was her job to please them.
Inside the manor, she jiggled the bucket down beside her and dipped a cracked wooden bowl into the water to wash up. Scrubbing her hands, she paused briefly to peel a blister from the center of her palm.
“Annie,” Mr. Whitfield called from the dining room. When she walked in, he was already seated, his fingers interlocked, resting on the cherry-wood table, his brows furrowed.
“It’s past eight.”
“Sorry, sir.” Had it gotten that late, already? “Breakfast will be ready soon.”
She served her master mint tea, then scrambled about in the kitchen clanging pots and dropping silverware, desperate to serve in a timely fashion. Thirty minutes later, she brought four crinkled strips of bacon on rye and two eggs cooked over easy on a porcelain platter to the table.
“Will Miss Caroline be joining you this morning?”
“I don’t see her.” Annie stood back against the wall, her hands clasped together when he lifted his fork and shot a prayer to the good Lord above. Let him be pleased.
Mr. Whitfield continued to sip his tea and poke at his breakfast after the first few bites. He flung the deep fried pork back on his plate and sighed.
“Sir, is your food all right?”
“It’s fine, Annie. But I need something stronger.”
“Sir?” She knew. Didn’t want to know.
“Annie, get me something to drink.”
“Looks like you ain’t had a bite. Would you like me to cook a little more bacon for you? Did I make it too hard? I sure don’t mind.”
“No, it’s fine, Annie. It’s my mouth.”
“Tooth still hurting?”
“Only when I eat.” Mr. Whitfield looked up and shook his head. He was handsome, sure enough. “I’ll be fine.”
She rushed into the kitchen, poured rum from a tall flask into a dainty, flowered coffee cup he had her purchase for Caroline. It proved a nice disguise. No reason to remind anyone the liquid serpent was slipping down the back of his throat this early in the morning, hours before it was deemed proper for any gentleman. She would pour the rest of the devil out little by little when she got the chance.
“Whatever I can do, you just let me know.” She set the spill platter before him and handed him the cup. “It’s my job to please you.”
Frowning at the delicate handle he gripped with large fingers, he sighed. “Actually, your job is to serve.”
“To serve you well. I give myself a little more to rise up to.” Annie thought of the words of a hymn she heard one Sunday morning from the balcony of that white paint-chipped church in the woods. The first one of its kind to allow Coloreds to worship with Whites—as long as they came nowhere near one another. The tune vibrated from her lips into a hum.
“Is there something else you could do?”
“I won’t be no good far off someplace else. Not trying to serve you.”
“I’ve been served. Go. Please.”
The sharpness pierced a little. He had been testy ever since Caroline arrived.
The thought of that woman churned her stomach. There was something about Caroline she couldn’t stand. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she felt it the moment she saw her, had served her that platter of roast. Something wasn’t right. Green eyes looking down, looking away. All that fidgeting and fretting got in her bones, made her just as restless. Every time she saw her leaning forward, her back curved in submission, batting her frog eyes big at Master Whitfield, something in Annie’s bones went cold. She wanted to snatch her straight and slap those lids back in her head.
But like lightning, Mr. Whitfield took a shining to her. The feeling struck him so fast Annie hadn’t seen it coming. Never in her life would she have expected a man of his class, of his caliber, to allow an unwed woman in his home, eating, sleeping under his roof for days, for weeks. It was shameful.
She watched the man drooped over his plate. He was now sipping that devil’s drink, that poison at all hours. Had never done such a thing before that woman arrived.
She was the poison. One Annie had to guard them against. Slithering in here messing up things.
Mr. Whitfield took a swig from the cup.
Annie shook her head. God help them all. And to think, he had been such a nice man.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lydia was it for him.
It was an it that made John glance up from the tobacco leaves, catch her eye, and in that brief moment send a message that said I see you. He saw her. He saw everything. Had she ever been seen? Truly looked at from the inside, known, as bare as bones?
It was that thing that at first made his heart skip when she came around with that water but now made it beat steady, strong, and sure because this was it, and there wasn’t going to be no other way around.
It was the thing that kept him awake, stole his slumber earlier on, then made him lie down in the pastures of peace because he knew this one was for real.
It was that soft smile across the field for no one but him. I see you.
This one he knew before, had encountered her like no other. This one who could see him, sure enough, could feel him even from miles away.
When he found her beaten, bloody, in the leaves in the same woods he ran, breaking free of the same shackles, he tore the sleeve of his shirt and wrapped her head, tied it tight, bound the wound that would leave the scar that she hated. The scar that she needed. A reminder of all she had been through, how she had suffered but survived a pain great enough to snuff out her life. If she touched it and let it touch her, she would remember that a boy with black skin wanted her, loved her. She would remember who she was in him.
Of all the people in the world, many good, fewer great, finally there was one. There was one he dreamed of. He looked to find this one who knew him, who could breathe him in and keep on moving because she was him and he was her. She didn’t even notice the moment he entered in, began to swim through her blood because he was always there. Always. Before the beginning, they were one. All he ever wanted was in the eyes of this one who understood, who knew him. Before he could speak, she heard. Before he could reach, she touched. Before he could cry, she wiped the tears. A breathing, a moving of spirit, that sealed for life not two separate souls but a different manifestation of one self. A oneness unlike any other.
She saw him, and he saw her. He saw her so clearly it was seeing himself. Anything, everything she needed, he would give. All of him, he would willingly offer to finally see peace in her eyes, a rest in her spirit.
He knew where she was. Charles had seen her, had followed her because he had to. Somehow, some way they would be together. Nothing would keep them apart. Like goodness and mercy he followed and he would wait all the days of his life because she was it. The crinkling of papers in his palm kept him moving toward the woman he had to go after, he had to get back.
It wasn’t that he wouldn’t let go, it was that he couldn’t, even if he tried.
Tiny glass bottles of cinnamon and nutmeg clouded in Caroline’s slippery grip. She pinched the bonnet further over her eyes with the tip of her thumb and briskly stepped from the wagon she rode in town and walked past the barn and slave quarters, pleading she wouldn’t see John.
Heaven was deaf to her prayers.
She knew even with his shoulders, his back, to her, it was him sitting on the rusted fence. He sensed her. Turned to her.
“Lydia.”
Slowly, slowly, she lifted her head. How could she look at him?
He was standing now, his buttoned navy shirt half-tucked, half-hanging from his denim slacks, his hands in his pockets. He carried no trace of sadness or anger, just a softness in a chiseled face. As beautiful as ever. She looked away.
“Lydia.”
John. She felt herself warming in his presence. She wanted to smile. She didn’t.
“You’re alive,” he said, stepping closer.
“Yes.”
He nodded. She bit her lip and looked down. His boots. The same scuffed boots that had been tossed aside near their bareness.
“It’s good to see you.”
She stared at him. How could it be? It had been near two weeks since she’d kissed his lips. Touched those lashes.
“Don’t you want to ask how could I?”
“Sure.” He swallowed, shifted forward, one leg slightly bent in front of the other, his hands at his waist. “How could you, Lydia?” The words came out scratchy, gritty.
“You didn’t…I didn’t think you wanted me anymore.”
“Did you ask me?”
“I tried—”
“Did you ask me?” There it was. The anger she expected, she deserved. She clutched the glass jars tighter.
“I just thought—”
“You didn’t ask me.” His voice quaked. “You’re my wife. You don’t just walk away.”
“I’m sorry.”
For a moment, they stood in silence.
“So what?” He glanced up at her. “You’re a White woman now?”
“What?” She looked down at her attire. “Oh.” She straightened her dress with the tips of her fingers and swallowed. She did what she had to do. Didn’t know what to say. “John. I’m sorry.”
“Are you? Or are you happy now? A free woman. It’s what you’ve always wanted, Lydia. More than anything.”
She lowered her head and turned back to the manor.
“Again, Lydia? Again? You’re going to walk away again?”
His words pierced as she stepped farther away. How many tears could one shed? Hurt and shame lumped in her throat so thick, she could not swallow. Focused on her new life, she forced them down, but they shot to the pit of her stomach and soured.
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