The Loom (10 page)

Lydia, there’s something I need to say.”

“What is it?”

“Sit down.” John helped her settle onto a pile of straw, kneeling beside her. Moonlight streaked her cheek. She lit everything, made even Dr. Kelly’s pine-scented storehouse bright.

The space was humid, warm. John tugged on the collar of worn denim, unsure which to blame—the weather or the woman sitting in front of him.

An hour earlier, they had slipped off and wandered around carefree. She begged him to take her somewhere, anywhere to see something different. It was a risk, but he had to admit stealing away with her gave him a rush he hadn’t expected.

They walked past the slave cabin to the place he came daily to store supplies for the doctor.

The storehouse was sheathed in weatherboard under an old shingle roof. Inside, the one-room house was divided in half by a stack of pine wood shelves rising seven feet high. Tonight, it acted as a barrier from the real world, offering them something for the first time, a place of their own.

“Lydia, you ever seen a man in love?”

She stared at him.

“Ever seen a man treat a woman like she’s everything? Like a rose, making sure she don’t get trampled on?” John covered her hands with his. “Ever seen that, Lady? A man in love?”

“Dr. Kelly’s not around much, but—”

“I’m not talking about Dr. Kelly.” He edged closer. “You’re seeing it right now. You’re seeing it right now, Lydia.”

Slowly, slowly, she smiled.

“You’re my rose. But you know what? I can’t take care of it. My rose don’t got much of a chance, not if I don’t protect it. And I can’t. Not like this. Dr. Kelly’s got the freedom to do it and I’ve got to have it too.”

“What are you saying?” He could see her chest rising and falling.

“I’ve got money.”

“Money?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Enough. Enough to get out of here.”

“John?” She scrambled to her knees. “John, you think they’ll let you go?”

“That I don’t know. I’m hoping. I’m going to find out.”

“When?” She looked down, bit her lip.

“Soon.” He had no idea. “The perfect time.”

“There is no perfect time, John. You know that.”

“We’ll know when.”

“We?”

“Yes. I want you to come with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I have money for both of us. I have enough.”

“John…”

“I have enough.”

She studied him.

“More than a thousand dollars.”

“John, how—where did you get it?”

“It’s my lot.” He inched closer, her knee against his, and whispered, “Riches gathered, collected from age to age. It was my great-grandmother’s plan.”

She stared at him, shook her head.

“Yes. MaDora wanted one of her kin to walk free. She hired herself out washing clothes for pennies. Pennies, Lydia. Whatever she made, she stored in an old metal box, welded on the top lid, the first three cents she ever earned. She passed that box filled with all her money—didn’t spend one penny on herself—to her son, my grandfather, Lee Sanders. He was a carpenter and followed after the path of his mother faithfully. Cutting wood, carving detailed designs into rocking chairs, tables, benches, all things wooden subject to splintered hands and a mind, I believe, powerful enough to create a world. A gifted man who made the most for his children’s children. He brought in the most money out of all of us together. I’m telling you, Lydia, he could’ve used that wealth for himself. Could’ve bought himself out of bondage, I’m sure, but he remained faithful to his mother’s dream. He wanted it more for me, more for those to come.”

“That’s amazing.”

“It is. My mother, just before she died, passed the box on to me.”

“Where is it?”

“Here. Buried. She sold vegetables from her garden on Saturdays. I tell you, she never did see a day’s rest.” He dropped his head, hated to think of the weariness that hung her lids, her shoulders heavy. “Master Ridge let me hire myself out, welding, at the end of the week to small farms near his plantation. And here we are. Finally enough.”

The telling of his story, this account of his people whispered to the one he loved, was sacred. It moved him and he found his palm open against his chest, his heart, the thumping, the rhythm of life from kin to kin.

“But with all the trading, the selling, the moving around, how did it stay in your family?”

“That’s the miracle, Lydia. It stayed because it was supposed to stay, settled in my hands for such a time as this. For us.”

“That money was saved for you. We’re not even married or nothing.” Her words were light and lyrical, but worry creased her brow. Although the world didn’t recognize their union, they could, should acknowledge themselves. She rubbed a piece of straw between her fingers. Large green eyes blinked up at him.

Those eyes. Married…Yes. They’d have to do something about that.

“I just need to talk to Dr. Kelly.” He pulled at the straw in her hand. “At the right time.”

She didn’t answer.

“What do we have to lose, Lydia?”

“Nothing.”

The word tumbled from her lips too fast, fell deep in the pit of him. She had nothing to lose. Not a thing.

She sat up on her legs and stretched the length of her dress around her, inching forward beside him. Her knee against his thigh.

She smiled and he felt himself breathing again. Had he been holding his breath? He wanted to keep her smiling. What he would do to keep her happy…

John lay back with his hand behind his head and closed his eyes and saw himself answering to no one but God. A real man.

Pieces of straw pricked his arm as Lydia slid beside him. When he opened his eyes, hers were closed and he saw the girl in the woods. He would carry her again. Take her home. Keep her safe. He slid his arm behind her, around her, and folded her into him.

What he needed was the perfect timing that would lead them on a path out of here, but what he wanted was another miracle, a way to keep the world from ever hurting her again.

He drifted off. Lydia danced in his dreams, light and free. His Lady.

“John…John?”

He awoke to her smile shining down on him. He scrambled up and swiped his face with his palm.

“Lydia, I’m sorry.”

“You’re fine.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“Not long. An hour maybe.”

“Why didn’t you wake me? I’ve got to get you back.”

“You were smiling.”

“Smiling?”

“In your sleep.” She grinned. “As close to free as you could be tonight.”

It wasn’t easy living without love.

Love was the breath that moved through a body, lit a soul, the spirit that, if quenched, left one empty on the outside of a changing world simply watching.

Emma Kelly watched the girls picking blueberries from the sheer curtains of her bedroom window and shook her head. Their fingers would be stained purple for days, but the ruffled ivory sleeves Elizabeth repetitively shoved above her elbows would be stained for life. She couldn’t count how many times she’d warned her daughter of wearing anything she cared about in the fields. No matter how much Lydia scrubbed, dark splotches would fade, but never lift completely. Emma had tried herself once and scrubbed her fingers raw. Giving up, she resorted to lye, pouring the bubbling liquid over the cloth, but it burned her skin until it oozed pus and seared a hole through the fabric. She now knew some things couldn’t be saved.

She watched her daughter with Lydia, saw herself in earlier years. The full of their skirts accentuated their cinched waists as they leaned over the bushes, their hands cupped under clumps of fruit they rubbed, loosened until they fell into the bottom of the wooden buckets swinging from their forearms. They were good girls, had grown into nice women. Cora still a baby among them.

Cora.

The pain of looking at that girl had dissipated with all her other emotions. The moment she witnessed what she tried to disregard, she froze like a pillar, her heart now stone.

It was the only way she could rise day after day, nod at passersby, smile at humor that was no longer amusing, sit among the living. If she had continued to feel the truth, every ache, every hurt, process all the anguish and deceit from a man she had loved, the weight of it would have broken her, stripped her mind of understanding, and she would’ve ended ripped to her core. Like Beatrice.

Emma and Beatrice. Elizabeth and Lydia. Her daughter was likely to suffer the same fate, her husband one day wanting the other, the slave woman in her house.

Emma had been in love, grateful for this gentleman to whom her father bestowed her. She was to be the lady of her own home.

She beamed at the thought of it, no more than a girl, three seasons shy of her twentieth year. Her heart warmed at the small smile on Michael’s lips as they rode in silence down the dark winding road, to the old colonial her father sold him, Beatrice toggling in the wagon behind them.

Alone in their sleeping quarters, she stared into his big, brown eyes and longed to feel his large arms around her, to lie against the warm fur of his chest, but when she kissed his temple, he flinched. When she wrapped her arms around his neck, he gripped her hands, his thumbs pressing against the small bones of her wrist, and pulled away. Only on occasion did he come to her in the middle of the night, and only for a few moments, only touching as much as needed. She lie like Leah, unwanted, swaddled in cool sheets and hot tears.

Emma wondered what was wrong, why he resisted what was rightfully his. She sat for hours contemplating, painting her lids, her cheeks, her lips, bathing in scents of vanilla, crushed petals of lilac, pouring oils as fragrant as they were sacred, anointing the parts of her body she prayed he’d desire, but nothing drew him to her.

One morning, she sat across from him, Beatrice serving hot steaming flapjacks between them. She spoke to her friend, bid her good morning, and witnessed dark eyes darting from her gaze to her husband’s. Beatrice scrunched the buttons between her cleavage into her fist and turned away. Michael cleared his throat and rose, brushed against her thigh as he walked out. It was their last breakfast together.