“You can’t rescue everybody by standing in one place,” Lottie told her.
Mercy clenched her hands.
“I know.”
Caleb gathered his coat and father’s ruler.
The thought of entering another man’s property to search for Miriam made him afraid.
But he had spent too long being moved by orders delivered under seals.
For once, the direction of travel was his own choice.
Chapter Eleven: The Orchard Road
The orchard road ran between fields too poor for tobacco and groves of apple trees left untended after the last hard winter.
Caleb and Amos walked at the edge of the trees, keeping the road in sight without trusting it.
They passed a ruined smokehouse and a pond covered with duckweed, then stopped beneath a stone wall when they heard wheels.
A wagon carrying flour sacks rolled toward the station, and a boy seated in the back counted fence posts aloud.
The simple sound of a child laughing made Caleb think of the infant he had not seen.
He tried to picture a face, but every image was borrowed from somebody else’s story.
Was the child Eleanor had delivered really his, or had she used that possibility because she knew it would frighten him into obedience?
He could not answer, and the question seemed to grow heavier with each mile.
Amos watched the wagon disappear.
“You’re thinking about the child,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Then think about what you know rather than what she says.”
“I know Eleanor can hurt Ruth.”
“We are trying to stop that.”
“I know she can hurt the baby too.”
Amos lifted his hat and wiped his forehead.
“The baby’s safety matters, but your freedom does not disappear because a baby exists.”
Caleb took a breath he had been holding for miles.
“I wish someone had told me that before.”
“I wish many things had been said sooner,” Amos replied.
By evening they reached Old Orchard Station, a low building with a sloping porch and a yard full of wagon wheels.
Cyrus Bell stood under a lamp examining a cracked axle.
He was a broad man with close-cropped hair and a stiff left leg.
Amos approached cautiously.
“Cyrus,” he called.
The younger man’s tools fell from his hands.
“Uncle Amos?”
They held one another without speaking, and Caleb turned away to grant them a moment.
When Cyrus finally released Amos, his eyes were wet.
“I thought you were sold to Louisiana,” he said.
“Somebody wanted that,” Amos answered.
