Chapter Twenty-Eight
After Rosalyn died, I no longer wanted to live in Traphill. Grief had settled over that house like ash. It clung to every
surface, impossible to brush away.
The crib standing empty. Her baby clothes folded away in a drawer.
The brothers had long complained about the journey between households—the wasted days on the road, the cost of maintaining
two sprawling farms, the impracticality of raising two large families so far apart. The wagon creaking through dust or mud,
depending on the season. The two of them arriving bone-tired, backs aching, shoulders stiff, the horse lathered and spent.
Even in temperate weather, with no troubles at either house, we lived with the strain of that distance. One family or the
other always out of reach.
Rosalyn’s death revealed the true cost of it. How cruel it could be.
When I said I wanted to leave, the brothers agreed without protest. They hired three neighbors as arbitrators to help devise
a plan. It was decided that a second house would be built on the Surry County land for Addie and her children, and I’d move
into her old house with mine. In dividing the property, Chang would receive more of the real estate, Eng more of the slaves—an
arrangement Eng was not entirely happy with but didn’t contest.
“We should be investing in factories or railroads,” he said to me. “Like the Northerners do. It’s folly to have so much capital
tied up in slaves.”
He could’ve fought for a different outcome. He could have insisted. But he let it stand, as he always did with Chang.
More slaves on the property. More faces I didn’t know. More lives entangled with ours. A growing dependence on a way of life
I had come to question more deeply with each passing year. It troubled me.
The new house—a mile from the old one—rose slowly, plank by plank, wall by wall. Chang oversaw the construction with his usual
blunt force, while Eng kept the accounts, tracking expenses in his narrow, slanted handwriting. Weeks stretched into months,
then more than a year. The pace was uneven, dictated by weather and the availability of hands. At one point, they paused construction
to build a road through the land between the two homes. Once finished, the ride between them would take just fifteen minutes.
Like Eng, I had consented to Chang’s terms. But as the new house took shape, it became clear that Addie was stepping into
something new, while I was moving into a space she had outgrown. It wasn’t resentment I felt exactly, but the realization
carried a familiar ache. I was still living a life molded in the shape of hers, not fully my own.
The seasons turned while I waited. In spring, dogwood bloomed and pale green shoots appeared along the fence line. After the
rains, the creek ran high, the air damp and sweet. By June, wheat fields rippled under a blazing sun, stained by shadow as
clouds passed overhead. New roses blossomed—a riot of pink against dark leaves. I’d planted them myself, tended them with
my own hands. Roses in memory of Rosalyn.
Summer dulled to drought. The creek shrank to a trickle, its bed strewn with roots and dry stones.
Then autumn crept in: decaying leaves, morning air edged with chill.
Maples flared overnight, as if lit from within.
A haze settled over the hollows. Winter brought more ice than snow: a crust on the well bucket, glassy trees. Nights stretched long.
It had been a year now since Rosalyn’s death. I didn’t mention the date to Eng, and he said nothing to me. But that afternoon,
as I reached for my knitting, my fingers touched something cool and solid nestled in the yarn. A silver rattle—the one Eng
had given Katie, meant to be passed from child to child.
I turned it over in my hands, tracing the engravings, worn smooth with use. It gleamed like new. Eng must have found it among
Rosalyn’s things, must have sat with it for a while, turning it in his palm before polishing it to a shine.
I held it for a long moment, listening to the house—the tick of the grandfather clock, the crackle of the fire, the rise and
fall of children’s voices in the next room.
It was a small offering, that silver rattle. I was grateful for it nonetheless.
As the date of the move approached, Grace and I worked side by side. I couldn’t have packed up the house without her. She
had kept the household together in the months after Rosalyn died, taken the children in hand when I could barely lift my own.
She knew my ways, my silences. She understood the weight of what we were bringing and what we would leave behind. Not just
the trunks and crates, but the corners of every room, the worn floorboards, the traces of ten years of living.
We sat up late, sorting through folded linens, old letters, chipped plates that had passed through so many hands they’d become
heirlooms.
When I asked what she planned to bring, Grace shook her head. “What I always bring, Miss Sarah,” she said. “My hands and my
back.”
We arrived at the farmhouse in Surry County in late spring.
The old house was solid enough, but it bore the imprint of Addie’s life, her choices and habits.
I ran my hands over the worn edges of the sideboard, the scuffed legs of the chairs, objects that had witnessed her family’s life only days before they became ours.
She’d left us most of her furniture, hand-me-downs from our parents’ house and practical pieces she and Chang had bought, taking only what she wanted for her new home.
I brought the brothers’ custom chairs from Traphill—their double-wide dining seat, the porch rocker, the parlor settee where
they’d sit in the evenings. These pieces gave me a mooring in a house that still felt like someone else’s.
We brought Rosalyn’s small casket too. I couldn’t bear to leave her behind on what would soon be a stranger’s land. On our
first morning, after the dew had lifted, I walked the property to choose a place for her. Later that day, under a weeping
willow at the edge of a slope, we laid her to rest. Eng and I stood silent as the men filled in the grave. It felt hopeful,
that reburial, an acknowledgment of her loss as we tried to begin again.
I planted iris and chamomile on the mound and placed the same small stone from Traphill at her head.
The children settled quickly, as children do. They found their places—the window seat in the front room, the crooked apple
tree perfect for climbing, the bend in the creek where minnows gathered in the shallows. They helped Grace and me unpack their
books and wooden toys and smooth familiar quilts over their beds.
Addie had never much cared for gardening.
As soon as we arrived, I marked out spaces around the back porch and began planting: hollyhocks and bluebells for summer, mums for fall.
Sweet peas to climb the porch rails, peonies along the walk, a bed of purple iris beneath the kitchen window.
The herb patch was sparse—just rosemary and thyme for cooking, mint creeping wild at the edges.
Remembering Phoebe’s instructions, I added sage for sore throats, feverfew for headaches, yarrow for fever. Lavender to cut and dry.
Papa’s adventure books on the shelves, fresh-cut flowers in vases, children’s boots lined up by the door, the settee by the
hearth. Little by little, Addie’s house was becoming mine.
Life narrowed after we moved to Surry County, but in some ways, it expanded too. It was an easy walk through the fields or
a short ride on the new road from one house on the property to the other. Addie and I visited several afternoons a week, sitting
on the porch with mending in our laps while the children played.
I couldn’t see her house from mine, but at night I imagined I could glimpse the lamplight from her windows through the trees.
When Eng was at her place, I sometimes caught myself listening for his laugh across the field.
The brothers no longer had to endure the long and arduous trip between households. Now they could stay for supper at my house
and still be at Addie’s before dark. Some mornings, when they were staying there, they’d surprise me by appearing in my yard
before breakfast, bringing news, borrowing a tool, or simply dropping by. They continued their weekly custom of hosting card
games in my dining room or hers—a rotating group of local men, with Alston joining when he could make the long trip from Wilkes
County, cigars and whiskey passed around the table, the flick of cards and clink of glasses gradually transforming strangers
into neighbors.
The land wasn’t so different—the same rolling hills, the same dense woods pressing close—but it didn’t feel the same.
The roads were unfamiliar. The people in town were strangers.
I’d left behind everything and everyone I’d known in Wilkes County: neighbors, the shoemaker, Dr. Albright, the bustle of Epps General Store.
When I walked to Addie’s, the only sounds were my own footsteps and the wind in the trees.
I no longer knew who might be around the next bend.
Children have an uncanny instinct for the adults around them. They figure out quickly who will meet which need. Addie provided
structure. I brought my messy enthusiasms, a way of turning disaster into adventure.
We each now claimed five children. Our eldest two, Katie and Josie, both nine, became fast allies. The rest followed suit
in their own fashion, the cousins forming a loose, living braid of friendships and rivalries. Sometimes, looking at them,
I momentarily forgot who belonged to whom. They were all mine, in a way, and all Addie’s. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, clearly
of the same clan, they moved between our houses like they were halves of the same home. I lost track of how many times I found
one of Addie’s perfectly mannered children on a window seat, reading a forbidden novel—or saw one of my unruly ones forming
precise letters under her watchful eye.