Chapter 12 #2
“You bear it because the alternative is dying. And there are people who need you alive more than they need you brave.” She glanced at Brodie. “Though sometimes brave and stupid look the same.”
“I’m right here,” Brodie muttered. “I can hear ye, ye know.”
“Good. Maybe you’ll remember this next time you think about being a hero.”
But there was no real reproach in her voice. Just weary acceptance.
When the wounds were clean and dressed, Abena stood. “I need to get back before someone notices I’m gone. You have five more minutes. Then you leave, and you don’t come back here. Understand?”
“Yes, thank you, Abena.”
She paused at the door. “Don’t thank me for this. Thank me by staying alive. Both of you. There’s been too much death already.”
Then she was gone, leaving us alone in the flickering candlelight.
Brodie shifted slightly, trying to get more comfortable on the pallet. Every movement made him wince.
“Ye shouldna have come,” he said quietly.
“I had to. I had to see you were alive.”
“I’m alive. Just wish I felt like it.”
I wanted to touch him—his hand, his shoulder, anything that wasn’t torn and bleeding. Instead, I just sat beside the pallet, close enough to feel his warmth but careful not to cause more pain.
“The little girl’s name is Ama,” he said after a moment. “Her mama told me. It means ‘born on Saturday.’”
“You remembered her name.”
“Course I did. She’s the reason I’m lying here like a side of beef.” But his voice held no bitterness. “Small thing. Big eyes. Terrified of those horses. When I grabbed her, she was crying for the damn cat. Didna even realize she’d almost died.”
“You could have died too. If those horses had—”
“But they didna. And neither did Ama.” He turned his head slightly to look at me. “That’s what matters.”
The candlelight painted his face in shadows and gold. Blood still crusted at the corner of his mouth from where he must have bitten down during the whipping. His eyes were tired, pain-dulled, but still sharp when they focused on me.
“Maddie. Where did ye really come from? I know what folks look like when they’ve been pulled from the water, from a shipwreck.” He made a noise in the back of his throat. “Were ye running from a husband who beat you?”
The question struck me, and I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “No, no husband. I’m from Philadelphia. I told you—”
“No.” He said it gently but with certainty. “Where did ye really come from?”
My throat closed. This was the moment. The chance to tell him the truth.
To explain everything—the garden, the stones, the impossible journey through time.
To make him understand why I was so strange, why I didn’t fit in, why I reacted to things the way I did, used words that didn’t exist yet, and couldn’t even curtsy properly.
To share the burden of the secret that was crushing me.
The words formed in my throat. I’m from the future. I fell through time. I don’t belong here.
But then I saw his back. Saw the price he’d already paid for being himself, for protecting others, for caring too much in a place that punished caring.
And I couldn’t.
If I told him the truth, he’d have another secret to keep. Another weight to carry. And the widow was already suspicious of me, already watching for any sign of strangeness.
If she found out what I really was—if she discovered the truth about the time travel, about the garden—she wouldn’t just punish me.
She’d punish everyone who knew. Everyone who’d helped me. Brodie. Thomas. Betsy. Abena.
Daniel’s face flashed through my mind. Dead because I’d helped him. Because I’d drawn attention.
I couldn’t risk Brodie in the same way.
“I’m just someone who doesn’t belong here,” I said finally. “Someone trying to survive in a place that doesn’t want me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I can give you right now.” I met his eyes. “Really, I wish I could explain, but—”
He grunted. “But it’s not safe.”
“No, it’s not.”
He studied me for a long moment, and I saw the questions there. The doubts. The certainty that I was hiding something important.
But instead of asking me more questions, he simply nodded. “All right. When ye can tell me, I’ll listen. Until then...” He winced as he shifted again. “I’ll trust ye have good reasons.”
The relief was overwhelming. And so was the guilt.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me for that either.” His eyes were starting to close, exhaustion and pain dragging him toward sleep. “Just promise me ye’ll be careful. The widow’s watching ye. Watching both of us. Whatever ye’re hiding, whatever ye’re planning—be smarter than I was today.”
“I will.”
“Good.” His breathing was evening out, sleep pulling him under. “And Maddie? When this is over, when we’re free of this place, I want the truth. All of it.”
“I promise.”
If we survived. If we got free. If the widow didn’t feed us to whatever darkness lived in that cursed garden.
But I kept those thoughts to myself and just watched him sleep, counting his breaths, memorizing the rise and fall of his ravaged back.
Abena returned exactly ten minutes later.
“Time’s up, girl. Go. And be smarter about sneaking around. Margaret’s patrol goes past here in twenty minutes.”
I stood, reluctant to leave him here. Alone. Hurt. Vulnerable.
“He’ll be all right,” Abena said, reading my expression. “I’ll check on him through the night. But you need to leave before someone notices you’re gone.”
“Why are you helping him? Helping us?”
She glanced at Brodie’s sleeping form. “Because men like him are rare. He saved little Ama without thinking about the cost. And because in my twenty years here, I’ve seen too many good people broken by this place.
” She looked at me directly. “And because someone needs to survive this, needs to remember that kindness still matters. Maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s both.”
She ushered me to the door, checked the courtyard, then sent me back across the open space toward the main house.
I made it to my room with five minutes to spare before Margaret’s footsteps passed in the hallway, filling in for Mrs. Browne.
In the darkness, I lay on my narrow bed and stared at the ceiling.
Brodie had been whipped for saving a child.
Mrs. Browne had risked her position to tell me.
Abena had tended his wounds and protected our secret.
The widow thought she was teaching us the cost of defiance.
But she was teaching us something else entirely.
That there were people here worth fighting for. Worth protecting. Worth saving, even when it cost everything.
Daniel was dead because I’d tried to help him. But Ama was alive because Brodie had intervened. And I was still here, still breathing, still carrying the weight of my choices. Tomorrow they’d send him back to the fields, no matter that his back wouldn’t be healed.
As for me? Who knew what I’d be doing. But tonight, in this moment, we were both alive. Both still fighting. And that would have to be enough. Outside my window, storm clouds gathered on the horizon. Thunder rumbled in the distance, promising rain that might never come.
How many more days until the widow’s patience ran out, and she took us to that garden where Duncan had disappeared and so many others had died?
I didn’t know. But I knew one thing with absolute certainty. I wouldn’t let Brodie die for protecting me. Even if it meant telling him the truth. Even if it meant risking everything.
The storm outside mirrored the one building inside me—pressure mounting, electricity crackling, something that had to break soon. I just hoped we’d both survive the lightning when it came.