Chapter Twenty-One: The Work of Leaving
The carriages reached Harrow Glen before noon.
Corbin’s clerk filed the papers while Price waited beside the courthouse steps.
Isaiah watched every page receive its seal.
He asked the clerk to read the names again.
The man did so with visible impatience.
Isaiah did not apologize.
He wanted to hear each name spoken in a room where the Whitcombs could not interrupt.
When the final page was filed, Esther held Micah close and began to laugh.
The sound surprised everyone, including her.
Hester sat on a bench and covered her face with both hands.
Gideon stood beside her, too overwhelmed to speak.
Price gave Isaiah copies of the papers.
“Keep these somewhere dry,” he said.
Isaiah folded them carefully.
“I will.”
Thomas and Ada planned to leave for Baltimore after Thomas’s leg healed enough for travel.
They invited Isaiah, Esther, Micah, Gideon, and Hester to accompany them.
Isaiah asked for a week to decide.
Thomas nodded.
“You have earned the right to choose.”
Isaiah looked toward the town square.
He could hear a blacksmith working at a forge.
The rhythm reminded him of his father’s workshop.
“I would like to see the place where you build the next machine,” he said.
Thomas smiled.
“Then come when you are ready.”
The group rented rooms above a small bakery for the night.
Ruth had sent food with them, wrapped in clean cloth.
Esther unpacked the bread while Micah explored the unfamiliar room.
He stopped at the window and looked down at the street.
“Can we go outside?” he asked.
Esther looked at Isaiah.
Isaiah felt the old instinct to ask permission.
Then he looked at the papers on the table.
“Yes,” he said.
“We can go outside.”
They walked through Harrow Glen together.
Micah ran ahead to inspect a wooden horse in a shop window.
Esther followed him with a smile Isaiah had not seen in years.
Gideon and Hester walked behind them, talking about the journey north.
Isaiah paused beside a carpenter’s shop.
A man inside was shaping a board with a plane.
The sound was familiar and steady.
Isaiah watched the shavings curl away from the wood.
He thought of his father measuring twice before every cut.
He thought of Thomas’s broken wheel and Gideon’s warning.
He thought of Lenora’s locked door, which had seemed powerful until people began speaking beyond it.
Then he stepped into the shop and asked whether the carpenter needed help.
The man looked at his hands.
“Can you work a plane?”
Isaiah smiled faintly.
“I can.”
The carpenter handed him a board.
Isaiah tested its grain and began to work.
The first shaving fell to the floor in a long, clean curl.
Outside, Micah laughed at something Esther said.
Isaiah kept his hands steady and made the next cut.
