The steward had signed a statement supporting the accusation.
Daniel knew the papers could be used to pursue them even after they crossed into another jurisdiction.
Avery also reported that Brooks had placed Margaret’s testimony with several legal and religious contacts.
The false death certificate was being challenged.
Whitcomb had left Richmond abruptly.
Fenwick had shuttered the Bell Crossing warehouse.
Those moves showed fear, but they did not prove the operation had ended.
Daniel told Jonah that they must keep traveling.
The driver agreed.
The next evening they crossed a narrow river in a flat-bottomed ferry.
Samuel watched the water with fascination.
He had never traveled so far from home.
“Are we free now?” he asked Isaiah.
His father knelt beside him.
“We are moving toward a place where we can live without Mr.
Blackwood’s orders.”
“Is that the same thing?”
Isaiah looked toward Daniel.
“No,” he said after a moment.
“Not yet.”
The answer was difficult, but it was truthful.
Daniel put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“We won’t stop working for it.”
They reached a safe community in Pennsylvania after another week.
People there had prepared rooms, clothing, and food.
A teacher offered to help Samuel learn letters without hiding the lessons.
Hannah sat at the table and cried when the teacher spoke of a classroom as though the offer were ordinary.
Isaiah found work at a forge owned by a man who agreed to pay him wages directly.
He spent the first hour examining the employment arrangement because he scarcely trusted the idea that his labor could produce money belonging to his family.
Daniel received tools from a carpenter who had heard of his skills through Jonah.
He was invited to repair a roof for wages.
The first coin placed in his palm seemed impossibly small for the meaning it carried.
He turned it over several times.
No one demanded he surrender it.
He used part of the money to buy a proper bandage for his knee and saved the rest for the search for Ruth.
Letters continued arriving from Richmond.
Margaret had prepared a sworn account of her confinement with the help of Brooks.
Catherine had confirmed the forged correspondence and supplied the notebook detailing payments to Silas.
The proceedings over Margaret’s estate were ongoing.
They moved slowly, and Richard contested every claim.
Yet copies of the documents now existed in more than one place.
His threats could no longer erase every record at once.
