Catherine stared at Daniel.
“Do you understand what that means?”
“I understand that the colonel has been lying.”
“No, you do not understand.”
She spoke sharply, then seemed to hear herself.
“I mean that I cannot tell which parts of my own life are true.”
Daniel wished he could offer her pity without surrendering his caution.
He could not.
She remained a person who could summon an overseer with a pull of a cord.
A woman’s grief did not cancel the power she held over the men and women in her household.
He gestured toward the narrow account book.
“The letters are only half of it.”
Catherine opened the book.
Its first page bore a line in Richard’s handwriting.
Special Disbursements, 1851 to 1855.
Below were dates, amounts, destinations, and initials.
Some entries referred to timber, horses, and transportation.
Others used letters instead of names.
Near the middle Daniel saw Ruth Carter again.
Next to her name was the notation that had kept him awake for months.
Transfer withheld pending inquiry.
He had been told she was sold eleven years earlier.
The book suggested another possibility.
He placed one finger beside the notation.
“Your husband knows where my mother went.”
Catherine did not look at him.
At the bottom of the page, one entry bore Margaret’s initials.
The amount was larger than the plantation’s annual purchase of tools.
Beside it Richard had written only one word.
Silence.
A footstep sounded in the hall.
Daniel shut the book.
Catherine replaced the false panel with both hands.
The step passed their door.
Neither of them breathed until it had faded.
“Please,” Catherine whispered.
“I need time.”
“Then use it to decide whom you will protect.”
He stood.
She tried to say his name, but he was already at the doorway.
“Daniel, what do you intend to do?”
“What I’ve intended since I saw my mother’s name.”
He paused without turning around.
“Find the people he made disappear.”
Chapter 4: The Laundry Window
The next morning Daniel found Hannah Bell rinsing sheets behind the washhouse.
Steam drifted from the iron kettle and condensed on the cold windowpanes.
The routine was ordinary enough to conceal a conversation.
Hannah had learned to speak while working without allowing her hands to slow.
“Did she hurt you?” she asked before Daniel reached the trough.
He had told Isaiah only that Catherine summoned him alone.
The rest had spread through the quiet intelligence of people whose safety depended on noticing who returned from the great house after dark.
