Chapter Thirty-Nine
When Grace came back, several weeks later, I was in the kitchen building with Robert on my hip, stirring cornmeal mush over
the fire. The baby was squirming, hot against my side, his damp fingers tugging at the collar of my dress. The air was dense
with the scent of bacon grease, the heat of the stove pressing close.
She stepped inside as casually as if she’d only just stepped out.
“Go on,” she said, taking the wooden spoon from my hand. “I’m sure you’ve got other work to do.”
For a moment I stood there, dumbfounded. “What are you doing here?”
She kept stirring. “I couldn’t find my mama. I don’t have any kin but my sons. Noah found a job, but Daniel and Isaac are
as rootless as I am. They need work.”
“Well, I’m glad to see you,” I said.
“I’ll stay, with conditions,” she said in a calm, low voice. “I want a fair wage. And I want to live in a real house. Not
above the kitchen. Not in one of those cabins.”
“All right.”
“My sons will live with me, for protection. I want a lock on the door.”
I nodded. I understood.
“I’m not calling you Miss Sarah anymore.”
“Of course. I don’t expect—”
“And I want to learn how to read.”
Only a few months ago, that request would’ve been unthinkable. Illegal. Dangerous. But those laws were already crumbling before the war ended, and now they were meaningless—empty rules from a world that no longer existed.
“My boys too,” she added.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”
She leveled me with a look. “I always wanted to leave this place. I used to lie awake at night, thinking about it. I told
myself someday I’d find a way. Then it finally happened. And now . . .” She shook her head. “Here I am. Back where I started.”
Her voice wavered. “If it were just me, I’d keep on going. Start over someplace new. But with the boys, it’s too hard. Too
dangerous.”
I wanted to tell her they didn’t have to come back, that she had choices now. But we both knew it wasn’t so simple.
“They’ll be safe here,” I said.
“I don’t know about that. Safer, maybe.”
The next day, my sons James and Patrick joined Daniel and Isaac in starting work on a house for them and their mother. It
would be small but sturdy, a real home with a brick chimney and a wooden door that locked from the inside.
The air was mild but damp, the ground still springy from rain the night before. Grace arrived at the schoolhouse midmorning,
just as some of Addie’s and my children were settling in. Through the open window, we could hear Daniel and Isaac joking as
they carried shingles across the yard.
When she stepped inside, the room hushed. I’d told Jeb she was coming, and when he saw her, he gestured toward the long wooden
bench where Addie’s Albert and my Fred sat swinging their legs. “Find a seat, Miss Grace,” he said. “Wherever you like.”
She nodded. The boys moved over to make room for her. She sat at the end.
Jeb reached into his desk and pulled out a wood-framed slate and a stub of chalk. “We’ll start with the alphabet.” He wrote on the slate—A, B, C—and held it up. “Do you recognize these letters?”
She lifted her chin, hands folded in her lap. “I’ve seen them.”
He set the slate on the desk in front of her. “Now copy them. A. B. C.”
I watched as she pressed the chalk to the slate, her movements unhurried and precise as she traced each one.
I found myself reaching for the copper bell, expecting Grace to materialize as she always had. A reflex, as thoughtless as
blinking.
In time, I learned to set the bell down.
No more footsteps in the hallway before dawn. No more trays arriving from the kitchen house, breakfast hot and waiting.
The hardest part wasn’t learning to do things for ourselves, though that was difficult enough. It was learning to see people
we’d spent years looking through. To acknowledge that the women who had wiped our children’s tears had children of their own
whose hurts had gone unseen. That the men who tilled our fields knew every inch of this land better than we ever would. That
those who had lived beside us, tended to our needs, known our habits—what time we rose, what foods we liked, what secrets
we kept—had lives we’d never bothered to ask about.
We had to learn how to talk about money with people who had never been paid. To say “Mr.” and “Mrs.” to those we’d only called
by their first names.
Some of our neighbors couldn’t stomach the shift.
They sold their land for pennies and moved west. Others tried to preserve the old order by passing laws to keep freedmen from voting or owning property.
And when laws weren’t enough, they turned to threats, to violence, determined to ensure no Black man dared believe himself their equal.
A settlement sprang up two miles from us, built by former slaves. They named their streets Freedom and Liberty and Justice.
They built their own church. Their own schoolhouse.
It’s strange to think now how certain we had been of our place in the world.
When travel restrictions eased, I sent my son James with a wagon to Taylorsville. Three days later, he returned with Dinah.
I watched from the porch as he helped her down, her gait slow but composed, a satchel tucked under one arm. Her hair was white
now, her back bent, but her gaze was as steady as ever.
I hadn’t told Grace. I wasn’t sure James would find her mother, and I didn’t want to give her false hope.
When Grace stepped out of the washhouse and saw her mother in the yard, she stopped short, a basket of laundry balanced against
her hip. For a long moment, they simply stared at each other, as if neither could believe what they were seeing.
“Mama?” Grace dropped the basket, linens spilling across the grass. She ran toward Dinah, apron strings flying behind her.
They embraced wordlessly, Grace’s face buried in her mother’s neck.
Grace’s son Daniel had found work at a textile mill in Gastonia and would be leaving soon. When he did, Dinah would take his
place in Grace’s new house. For now, she would stay in one of the cabins we’d refurbished for paid employees.
When Grace led her toward her quarters, Dinah paused in front of me. “Hello, Miss Sarah.”
“Welcome, Dinah. And please, just call me Sallie. Grace does.”
She inclined her head. “It was kind of your son to fetch me.”
“We should’ve figured out a way to do it a long time ago,” I said.
She shook her head slowly. “Took a war to bring me back to my child.”
Not a thank-you, not a reproach. Just a simple statement of fact.
Grace told me that Phoebe’s son, Peter, had taken over the blacksmith’s forge in town—a trade he learned from his father,
Cato, now too bent with age to lift the hammer himself. She’d seen them walking home from the market: Cato steadying himself
on Peter’s arm, Phoebe a few steps ahead with a woven bag hanging from her elbow, sturdy and smiling, calling greetings to
friends.
For years I’d pushed the memory of her away. It was easier to think of her as a shadow that slipped out the door and never
returned. The truth was harder to bear. Eng’s anger had been swift and absolute—grief twisted into blame. Rosalyn was gone,
and someone had to answer for it.
One Sunday I gathered my courage and drove my buggy to the forge.
The sound met me first—that familiar clang of hammer on iron that once marked the rhythm of our days. I stood at a distance,
watching. Peter had Cato’s broad shoulders and Phoebe’s penetrating gaze. He worked with steady precision, guiding the iron
through the flame.
A small cluster of people waited in the yard—farmers with plows to mend, a woman cradling a broken cooking pot, children chasing
one another between customers. Phoebe stood among them, her hair now streaked with gray, passing out cups of water.
Our eyes met. For a moment, I thought she might turn away. But she didn’t. She gave a small nod, an acknowledgment.
When the crowd had thinned, I approached her. “Do you have a moment to talk?”
“I do.”
We sat together on a bench.
“Eng was wrong to cast you out. And I was wrong to let him.” My throat constricted. “I am truly sorry. You cared for Rosalyn
as if she were your own.”
She looked down at her hands, then over at me. “For a long time, I thought I deserved it. I carried that guilt for years.”
She paused. “Our lives were . . . hard. But Cato and I have found contentment. We own a home. Peter has three children of
his own who make me smile every day.”
“I’m glad.”
“I hope you’ve found peace of your own, Sallie.”
I nodded, thinking of the slow folding of grief into memory.
“Would you come for a visit sometime?” I asked. “Grace is still with me. And her son Isaac. Her mother, Dinah, too.”
“We’ll see,” she said. “I’m busy here. Helping Peter get started, keeping an eye on his little ones. Doing what I can, you
know.”
“I know,” I said.
Phoebe stood, brushing a bit of ash from her apron. She glanced toward the forge, where Peter laughed with a customer, sweat
glinting on his brow. A small girl—five, maybe—darted toward Phoebe, clutching a rag doll. She whispered in her ear.
Phoebe gave me a faint smile. “I should get back.”
I stood too. “Of course.”
As I turned to leave, the wind shifted, carrying the tang of hot metal and woodsmoke. A child laughed. The hammer struck again,
the ring of it echoing off the stones. I stepped around a chicken pecking near the wheel of my buggy and climbed up, the worn
reins familiar in my hands. I gave them a small flick and set off down the road.