Love Finds You in Liberty, Indiana

by Melanie Dobson

  The evenings grew shorter into November, and snow finally came. The sheriff rationed her firewood, but he gave her enough to keep from freezing. She wrote more letters and stories, but on the days that it snowed, she stood by the window, a blanket wrapped over her shoulders, and watched it come down.

  During the nights, when she couldn’t see the snow or the people wandering the courthouse lawn, she prayed by the firelight. And she sang. And most of all, she listened.

  Chapter Forty

  Wind rattled the windows of her cell, waking Anna an hour before her father was supposed to drive her away from Liberty on his sleigh. There was at least a foot of snow on the ground, and she could hardly wait to be outside—to feel the sun on her face, the snow on her boots, the breeze in her hair.

  Days earlier, she’d watched and listened to the carolers traveling up and down Main Street on Christmas Day, stopping to visit with family and friends along the way. She didn’t celebrate holidays like Christmas, but listening to them sing, she had longed even more to be with the people she loved.

  She wanted to go home.

  God had been faithful to her during the past two months. He had shown her that no matter what happened, no matter how many more days she had to spend in jail, she shouldn’t stop helping the runaways. It didn’t matter how many people knew about her night escorting that man and woman toward Jacob’s Knob. They didn’t know about the hiding place at the mill. And they didn’t know who helped her with her work.

  She only hoped Joseph would bring more people to their station.

  Someone rustled the door and Anna stood, expecting to see her father. Instead Daniel walked into the room and smiled at her. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay a few more days?”

  Her heart leaped at the thought of being alone with him again. “I think I’m ready to go.”

  Randolph Zabel skulked through the door after Daniel. “I’m ready for you to go!”

  She turned to the sheriff. “Thank you for allowing so many people to visit me.”

  He grumped at her in return and then dug into his coat pocket. “A letter came to my mailbox yesterday, addressed to you.”

  Usually her letters were delivered to her father, but this one was special. She reached for the envelope and saw Charlotte’s return address. Her fingers traveled across the lip, and she felt a tear in the paper. It seemed as if someone had opened it and tried to glue it back together. She hoped it had been the sheriff.

  She looked back up again. “Thank you.”

  She pulled on her gloves. Even though she’d tried to exercise her legs in the cell, they still ached as she lifted her skirt and tromped through the dry snow. The sky was blue, the air an icy cold. It all felt incredible to her.

  “It’s like your poem about the seasons,” Daniel said as he escorted her toward her father’s sleigh. “Nature has wrapped itself into a cocoon.”

  She stopped walking. “You thought that poem was about the seasons?”

  “It was the poem you gave to my sister.”

  “I know which poem, Daniel,” she said, disappointed that he didn’t understand. “It’s the one about rebirth.”

  She watched as it slowly dawned on him that she hadn’t been writing solely about the changing seasons, but about a slave falling away from his old life and the sufferings he must endure before he was reborn.

  They reached the sleigh, and Daniel stopped walking. “It’s about the journey....”

  “Of course it is.” She kissed Samara on the nose and then climbed into the seat.

  Daniel covered her in blankets, but as they rode toward home, she barely noticed their warmth or the heat of the soapstone at her feet. She listened to every sound around her. Relished every sight. Clumps of snow fell off tree branches and dropped to the forest floor. Smoke billowed up from chimney tops and floated into the air. Every woodpile they passed was dusted in white.

  Two deer leaped across their path, and she clutched her hands to her chest. God’s creation was everywhere. In the trees and the animals and even the rocks frozen into the river beside them.

  Most of all, though, she was aware of the man sitting beside her. It had been two months since he had crept to her cell in the middle of the night, worried about what had happened to her. Two months since he had fought for her rights in court. If he hadn’t, she would still be in that jail cell.

  It was strange that Esther had never mentioned his engagement during her time in jail, nor anyone else. Perhaps he hadn’t proposed yet to Charity. Or he was waiting to tell her when they were alone.

  She couldn’t wait a moment longer.

  She pulled the blanket down from her face. “Daniel, do you know Charity Penner?”

  He flashed her a look of surprise. “Is this the rumor you were trying to ask me about?”

  She fidgeted on her seat. “Perhaps.”

  “I do know Charity.”

  She tried to prepare herself for his words. To prepare herself for the happy news of his engagement.

  “The last I heard, she and Matthew Nelson were on their way to California.”

  Charity and Matthew? That meant...

  She pushed the blanket back over her nose so he wouldn’t catch her smiling. “They married?”

  “According to the Justice of the Peace.”

  A mixture of emotions collided inside Anna. She was sad that Charity had chosen Matthew over her faith. Glad that Daniel wasn’t marrying her. “But I thought...”

  He slowed Samara as they neared the covered bridge. “What did you think, Anna?”

  “My housekeeper told me you were courting Charity.”

  He didn’t try to hide his grin. “And this bothered you?”

  “Well...no.” She glanced through the windows of the bridge. She wanted to be honest with him, but how could she tell him that his courting Charity, or anyone else, bothered her very much? “Maybe a little.”

  “Isaac introduced me to her at Luke and Rachel’s wedding, but I don’t suppose that’s considered courting.”

  Her reply was muffled. “I don’t suppose.”

  They rode the next mile in silence, past the mill and up the hill to her house. Her heart pounded in her chest, wondering at this man beside her. She was relieved that he didn’t love Charity, but did he love someone else? Or could he possibly love her?

  As they crested the hill, she saw her father on the porch, waving both hands over his head. She waved back, and when they stopped, she jumped down from the sleigh and ran to him.

  The inside of the house was warm and smelled like pine. She needed a bath and a good night’s rest, but she was glad to be home—with her father and Daniel.

  “Where’s Ruth?” she asked when they stepped into the parlor.

  “She’s not coming today.” Her father motioned her away from the fireside. “Daniel and I wanted to show you something by ourselves.”

  By a large window on the other side of the room was the large mahogany trunk that her mother’s family had brought with them when they escaped persecution in England. The trunk her father had hauled to the barn after she died. She brushed her hands over the lid, marveling at its beauty like she had when she was a child. She never thought she would see it inside their home again.

  She reached for her father and hugged him.

  “Look inside,” he said.

  And so she opened the lid, and her hand glided over the piles of her mother’s handmade treasures. Her father asked her to remove linens, so she lifted her mother’s embroidered pillows and tablecloths and other finery and stacked them on the chair beside the trunk.

  Her father reached for the lantern on the windowsill and lit it. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Anna, but we can’t keep slaves at the mill any longer.”

  Her eyes broke away from her mother’s things. “Why not?”

  “One of my workers found the room with food and water in it, and he asked who had been staying there.”

  She stood to her feet. “But I have to keep helping thes
e people!”

  “Anna...”

  The Spirit had urged her to continue on with her work. She couldn’t fail when He had so clearly led her. “We’ll have them stay upstairs again.”

  “People will be watching our house even closer now,” Edwin said, shaking his head. “We can’t have runaways knocking on our door.”

  She glanced over at Daniel, but he didn’t look upset at this news. In fact, he was smiling, and his happiness irritated her. How could he smile? She was going to care for runaways no matter what either of them said.

  Her father handed her the lantern. “I’m going to build a small house beside the mill, Anna, for myself—I practically live there anyway.”

  “But where will I go?”

  “Nowhere.” He smiled. “It’s just time for me to step aside and let someone else try to take care of you.”

  She didn’t need anyone to take care of her!

  She opened her mouth to refute his words, but before she could speak, she watched in amazement as her father leaned into the trunk and pushed. “Daniel and I and a couple of men from his Meeting devised a little something here....”

  The base of the trunk collapsed, and she gaped at the hole. “What is this?”

  Her father took the lantern from her hands and nudged her toward the trunk. “Go see.”

  She untied her bonnet and hung it on a chair. Lifting her skirt, she climbed over the side of the trunk and onto the top rung of a ladder. Her father handed her the lantern, and with it in hand, she climbed down four rungs and hopped into a small room.

  There was a stack of blankets along the wall and a basket for food. For a moment, the room reminded her of her jail cell, except the walls were dirt instead of rock. There would be no wind stealing through cracks in the wall.

  Dazed, she hardly noticed Daniel descend into the pit beside her. At the other end of the room was a narrow tunnel as high as her waist, and she ducked down to look inside. With the lantern in front of her, she balled up her skirt and crawled back slowly, thirty or forty feet.

  When she reached the other end, there was a trapdoor with a lock above her head. She swung it open and pulled herself up into the root cellar with their potatoes and vegetables...and an old rug that covered the floor.

  Slave hunters may continue to scrutinize their back door, but no one would think to watch their root cellar, hidden in the trees. Eventually the hunters would move on to another place, searching for runaways, but if they ever came back in the house, Anna would no longer worry that they would find the room and the runaways upstairs. “This is brilliant!” she whispered. She looked down into the hole to thank her father and Daniel, but Daniel was the only one who crawled out of the tunnel.

  She opened her mouth to thank him. To tell him how delighted she was. But instead of talking, she fell into his arms.

  He kissed her slowly. Her hair. Her nose. Her chin. When his lips met hers, her knees buckled. She didn’t want him to ever let her go.

  “Anna?” he whispered, and she shuddered slightly, as if it had all been a dream.

  When she opened her eyes, Daniel was there in front of her. And he was kneeling on the cold dirt floor.

  From his pocket, he pulled out a heart-shaped silver locket. It was identical to Esther’s piece, the one their grandmother had given to remind her grandchildren of all who had gone before them and of those whom they loved today.

  He closed his fingers around the necklace.

  “I don’t deserve you, Anna, but I love you with all my heart.” His voice broke with emotion, and she took his hands in hers. “I would be most honored...”

  Seconds ticked past, and she urged him on. “What is it, Daniel?”

  “Would you consider...” His voice trailed off again, and she couldn’t stop the smile that rippled across her lips. This was the proposal she had been waiting for.

  He opened his palm and lifted the locket. When she bent toward him, he clasped it around her neck. She touched her fingers to the silver, and then he took her hand back and wrapped his fingers around hers before he tried one last time.

  “Will you marry me, Anna Brent?”

  She kissed the top of his hand and squeezed it. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter Forty-one

  Two Months Later

  Daniel stepped down into the kitchen, pulling her to him, but Anna brushed him away. “We’re expecting company!”

  He took her in his arms again. Even though she was standing a few feet from the fire, she shivered. “The only company I want is my wife,” he replied.

  He kissed her, and for a moment, she forgot about their company and about their plans for the day. She forgot about everything until the doorbell rang overhead.

  She jumped. “Now you’ll have to stall them,” she said as she snatched the bowls of bread and meat off the kitchen table.

  He grinned. “Or we could ignore them.”

  She nudged him with her foot before she scooted around him. “Answer the door.”

  She rushed up the stairs ahead of him, balancing the two bowls and a pitcher in her arms. The bell rang again, and she set the food and tea on the floor of the parlor beside the trunk. Quickly she opened the lid, removed the linens, and pushed open the bottom.

  Light flickered in the room below. “Hello?” she called softly.

  Zebediah climbed up, and she passed him the food.

  She could hear voices in the entryway. “We’re about to have some company, Zebediah.”

  “Yessum,” he replied.

  “No one for you to worry about.”

  He climbed down the ladder, to his wife and two young children, and she grabbed the end of the board and pulled it up while her guests hung their cloaks in the front closet and dried their shoes.

  “Anna?” Daniel called out like he didn’t know where to find her.

  “I’m in the parlor.”

  She stuffed the last of the linens into the trunk at the same time Daniel walked into the room, followed by Joseph and Esther and their baby son. Esther didn’t even look at the trunk. In her hands was a copy of the latest Godey’s Lady’s Book, and she was waving it wildly in her arms.

  “Have you seen this?”

  Anna took the magazine from her hands. “What is it?”

  “There’s an article in it called ‘Liberty Line’ that you simply must read.” Esther sat down beside the trunk. “It’s about a society woman who hides slaves on the Underground Railroad.”

  “Really?” Daniel flashed Anna a smile. “In Godey’s?”

  “Can you believe it?” Esther said. “And it was actually good.”

  “Imagine that.”

  Esther held out Ben, and Anna took him into her arms. Every time she saw him, she marveled at his health. And she thanked God that he was protected in a loving home.

  “Did you hear the latest news about Simon Mathers?” Joseph asked.

  She glanced up. “Do I want to hear it?”

  “It seems that he has left town.”

  She sighed. He had left town before, but he always returned. “I’m sure he’ll be back.”

  “I don’t think so,” Joseph said. “No one’s naming names, but it seems like someone intercepted a letter from Canada that said Marie’s child had arrived safely.”

  Anna held on to Ben’s tiny fingers. She had hoped the sheriff had read her letter...and wouldn’t be able to keep Charlotte’s news to himself for much longer.

  “I bet Simon was fuming,” she said.

  “I believe he was.”

  Esther cocked her head. “Of course I hope you are no longer involved with helping slaves.”

  She smiled. “I’ve learned how to be happy at home.”

  “Your heart doesn’t still strive to be content?” Esther asked, pulling the words from her poem.

  “I’m content, Esther.”

  “Good for you.” Her sister-in-law turned her head. “And how about my brother?”

  Daniel sat down on the trunk and crossed h
is ankle over his leg. He wrote the Liberty Era from their home now and drove their buggy to Oxford once a week to print it. Anna helped him craft his words.

  Every day she loved him more for his courage and his passion and, these days, for the strength of his pen and the many secrets he guarded for her.

  “Are you finally content, Daniel?”

  He drummed his fingers on the lid of the trunk. “I’ll never be content, Esther, until the slaves are set free.”

  Anna sat down on the trunk beside him, and he took her hand in his. She knew it was hard for him to be quiet about their work when everything within him wanted to spout out the truth. He still railed against slavery in his paper and in his frequent debates with Milton, but when they married, Daniel had known he could never say anything about the people they hid in their own home.

  She never tried to squelch his passions. His fanaticism, as Esther had called it. She loved hearing him speak out for the slaves, and she loved even more when he bridled his tongue to protect those he wanted to defend.

  God had woven hers and Daniel’s hearts together in a beautiful bond. And in their silence, in their secrets, they had become one.

  Author’s Note

  Writing this novel has been an amazing journey for me! The idea for the story was sparked years ago, when I was growing up in a small Ohio town that had once been active on the Underground Railroad. My cousin’s home was rumored to have been a stop for runaway slaves, and as we played hideand-seek in the dark basement and other secret spaces, I wondered who had hidden there before the Civil War and what type of people would risk everything to help runaways.

  As I grew older, I began to research the mysterious Underground Railroad and realized that many people in the mid-1800s didn’t talk much about their role helping runaway slaves for fear of being caught. Nor did they write about it. Much of this history was recorded by men and women whose parents had been conductors or stationmasters on the Underground, and it was their memories that inspired me to tell Anna’s story.