Chapter Four
Springfield, Missouri
Sarah waited until Uncle Jacob’s breathing had settled into its beastly snore.
The house had gone cold hours ago. The hearth held a bed of gray ash and one blackened stick that gave no heat. She stood barefoot beside her bed with her dress gathered in both hands, listening to the wind press at the shutters.
A loose shutter tapped once against the wall. Jacob snorted in the room across the hall. Sarah let out the breath she had been holding.
Her carpetbag lay open on the quilt. She had packed it twice and unpacked it once.
There was not much to take. Two dresses.
Her mother’s blue shawl, worn thin at the fringes.
A comb with three missing teeth. A little tin of pins.
Needle and thread. The Bible her mother had kept by her bed, its leather cracked at the spine.
Sarah had tucked the letters beneath it, though she had thought of burning them.
She touched the Bible first, then drew her hand back.
The letters had brought this on. It had begun before she was old enough to braid her own hair, but the letters had given Jacob something he could hold up and sneer at.
He had found them that afternoon in the flour chest, tied with blue thread.
“What are these?” he had asked.
Sarah had been kneading dough. Flour covered her hands to the wrists. She knew the shape of the packet before he opened it. For a moment, she had watched his thick fingers break the knot, and thought only that he would ruin the thread.
Then he read.
His face did not change much. Jacob’s face rarely changed. It had grown square and heavy over the years, the skin around his mouth folding downward even when he was pleased with himself. But his eyes lifted from the page and found her across the kitchen.
“This is your plan?” he said.
She had not answered.
“You aim to sell—”
“I aim to leave.”
He had struck the table with his fist. The dough trembled beneath her hands.
“You’ll leave when I say you leave.”
“I’m eighteen.”
“You’re a foolish girl with no money and no sense.”
“I’ll manage.”
Jacob laughed then. That made it worse.
“You can manage a broom and a washbasin. Maybe you can manage to open your legs for a man desperate enough to accept you.”
The flour had dried on Sarah’s fingers. She remembered the hard white skin at her knuckles. She had wanted to throw the bread pan at him. Instead, she had watched him tear one of the letters in half.
He had not found the reply she had hidden inside her mother’s Bible, nor the small map or the few dollar bills she had saved. Sarah closed the carpetbag and fastened the brass clasp.
She pulled on her boots. The leather was stiff and cold. She put on her brown wool dress, her shawl, and her bonnet. Her hair was already braided down her back. She had done it before supper, while Jacob sat in his chair and complained about the beans.
The room looked strange without her things in it, though it had never been hers enough to feel lived-in.
The narrow bed. The washstand with its chipped bowl.
The window facing the barn. She had slept there since she was ten—since her mother’s death had made the house quiet in a way Sarah still could not bear.
On the wall near the door, a faint mark remained in the plaster.
Jacob had thrown a cup there the winter Sarah turned fourteen. It had missed her head by inches. He had apologized the next morning by leaving an extra strip of bacon on her plate. She had eaten it because she was hungry.
She picked up the bag.
The floorboard outside her room groaned under her weight. She stopped, one hand braced against the doorframe.
Nothing.
Jacob’s snore rose and broke off. Sarah waited. A long minute passed.
Then she walked down the hall.
She did not go into the kitchen. She had left a loaf of bread and a small sack of dried apples in the shed that afternoon, hidden behind the kindling box.
She eased open the back door and stepped into the yard.
The night smelled of damp earth and horse manure.
Clouds covered the moon. The barn was a black shape beyond the garden fence, its roof silver at the edges where the clouds thinned.
Sarah shut the door without letting the latch click.
Her heart was beating hard, but her hands were steady.
In the shed she found the food, a canteen, and the old muslin bundle holding her extra stockings. She tied the bundle to the carpetbag. Then she went through the yard toward the road.
Unslinging her uncle’s grey quarter-horse, Brandy, Sarah took a deep breath and continued. She would need it; there was a long way to go.
The road was pale mud between the trees. She turned west.
By dawn, if she kept a good pace, she could reach the larger road where wagons passed north and west. There would be people on it. Families. Traders. Men driving cattle. She would find a place among them until she reached the trail.
The thought frightened her. A branch slapped her shoulder as she passed beneath an oak. She did not stop to rub the place.
She had traveled perhaps two miles when she heard hoofbeats behind her.
At first, it was only a dull, uneven sound beneath the wind. Then came the creak of harness leather and the low rattle of a wagon wheel.
Sarah left the road at once, ushering Brandy with her.
She pushed through a break in the trees, catching her skirt on briars.
One thorn went through the cloth and scratched her calf.
She kept moving, bending low, and clutching the carpetbag close to the horse’s side.
The woods were thick here. If she could reach the creek bed, she might follow it awhile.
The ground would hide her tracks. She would be far enough to ride then without causing alarm.
The wagon stopped.
“Sarah,” Jacob’s voice carried easily through the trees.
She froze.
He had not called her Sarah since she was a child. He called her Sarah when he meant business, or when someone else was present and he wanted to seem respectable.
“Come out.”
She moved again.
A lantern flared behind her. Yellow light cut between the trunks.
“I see you. You’ve got my horse. You’re a dirty thief!”
She pushed the horse forward.
Her bag struck against her knee. The handle tore loose in one hand. She stumbled, caught herself on a sapling, then heard Jacob coming through the brush. His hand seized the back of her dress and yanked her around so hard the seam at her shoulder tore as she slid down Brandy’s side.
She hit him with the carpetbag.
It was a poor blow. The bag was light, and he knocked it aside. The Bible fell into the leaves. The letters slid free with it.
Jacob’s hand closed around her upper arm.
“You little fool.”
“Let me go.”
“You think you’re getting on that road?”
She drove her knee toward him. He shifted before it landed, and his open hand struck the side of her face.
The sound of it seemed louder than it was. Her bonnet flew off. For a second she saw the ground tilt—wet leaves and black roots—then she was down on one knee.
Jacob hauled her up again.
“You were going to shame our house.”
“There’s nothing worth shaming.”
His grip tightened.
“You don’t know a blessed thing about shame.”
Sarah tasted blood where her teeth had cut the inside of her cheek. She looked at him. His hair was uncombed. He had pulled his coat over his nightshirt and trousers, not bothering with a collar. He smelled of sleep and sour whiskey.
“You’ll die before you get ten miles if you leave.”
“I would rather be dead than near you.”
His face went still.
Sarah should have stopped. She knew it even then. But there was no place left in her for caution. She had spent years swallowing words until they had turned bitter inside her.
“You—you killed her,” she said.
Jacob blinked once. “Killed who?”
“You know who.”
His hand loosened on her arm.
“You killed her when you sent her out that night.”
The lantern hung from a branch behind him, throwing one side of his face into light. The other stayed dark. Jacob hit her again.
This time she fell flat in the leaves. Her ear rang. A stone pressed into her palm. She stayed there for a moment, breathing through her nose.
He stood over her.
“You speak on things you don’t understand.”
“I understand everything.” She shouted, “You’re a murderer—“
His boot struck her hip. Not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough that pain ran bright through her side and folded her over.
She pressed a hand to the ground and forced herself up.
Jacob watched her do it. His chest rose beneath his coat. He was angry, but something else had come into his face now. Not regret. She had spent too long studying him to mistake it for that.
Fear, perhaps. Fear that she would speak of Anne Foster to someone who had no reason to excuse him.
“You want to go?” he said.
Sarah did not answer.
He stepped past her, back toward the road. The wagon stood among the trees, one lantern hooked beside the driver’s seat. The mule shifted in its harness, ears flicking.
Jacob reached beneath the seat and took out a wooden box.
Sarah recognized it. It had belonged to her mother. She’d kept it on the high shelf in her room, and after she died, Jacob had taken it away. Sarah had asked about it once. He told her it was none of her concern.
He set it on the wagon seat and opened it.
Inside lay a small velvet pouch that was brown with age. There was also a folded piece of paper, yellowed at the edges.
Jacob picked up the paper. “Anne left instructions.”
Sarah did not move.
“She thought you ought to have this when you came of age.” His voice had gone flat again. “Lord knows why.”
He tossed the paper toward her. It landed in the mud.
Then he threw the pouch after it.
Coins clinked inside. Something heavier struck against them.
Sarah stared at the pouch.
“Take it,” Jacob said. “It’s your dowry. Such as it is.”
The word made her skin prickle.
He gave a short laugh. “Maybe it’ll buy you a decent dress. You can pretend you’re a real woman.”
Sarah bent slowly and picked up the paper first. The ink had faded, but she recognized her mother’s hand at once. Anne made her S’s with long, curling strokes.
For Sarah, when she is grown.
Nothing more was written on the outside.
She held it to her chest. Her fingers shook now. She could not stop them.
Jacob saw and smiled without warmth.
“That’s right,” he said. “Carry your little box and your letters. Go die in the hills.”
“Don’t.”
Jacob stepped closer. She did not back away. She would not give him that.
“You think you’re better than this place?” he said. “You think you’re better than me because you can read a few words and shoot a pistol straight? You’re just a girl who’s been itching to belong to somebody.”
He spat at the ground near her boots.
Then he climbed onto the wagon.
Sarah stood beside the road with her torn dress hanging from one shoulder. Her cheek throbbed. The carpetbag lay open among the leaves. One of the letters had blown against a root.
Jacob gathered the reins.
“You come back before sunup,” he said, “and I might forget this foolishness.”
She looked at him.
He waited. His mouth hardened. He snapped the reins. The mule leaned into the harness, and the wagon rolled away toward the house.
The lantern dwindled through the trees. The sound of the wheels faded. Then it was gone.
She remained where she was until the woods became quiet again.
A night bird called from somewhere near the creek. Water moved over stones in a low, steady rush.
Sarah crouched and gathered her things.
The Bible had a wet corner. She wiped it against her skirt. The letters were muddy but still tied together with the blue thread she had saved. She put them back inside the Bible, along with her mother’s note and the velvet pouch.
At the roadside she opened the pouch.
There were twelve silver dollars, a gold locket—small and oval—and a ring with a pale blue stone set in it. Her mother’s wedding ring.
Sarah closed her fist around the ring until its edge pressed into her skin.
She could go back. Jacob had left the road open behind her. The house would be there before daylight, with its cold hearth and its narrow rooms. He might not strike her again for a week. He might speak softly at breakfast, as if nothing had happened. He might say she had forced his hand.
For one weak moment, she wanted the known shape of it. The kitchen table. The bucket by the well. The sound of his boots in the hall.
Heat rose in her throat. Shame came with it, quick and ugly, though she had done nothing but write her name beneath an advertisement and ask if there might be a place for her in the world.
She put the pouch deep in her carpetbag.
The eastern sky had begun to thin behind the trees. It was not light yet, only less dark.
Sarah lifted the bag. Her hip hurt when she moved. She adjusted the shawl over the torn shoulder of her dress and stepped toward Brandy, who, thankfully, had not been spooked enough to run.
She mounted the horse and did not look back.