He rose and embraced her as the household applauded.
Caleb stood at the doorway carrying a tray and watched the chandelier turn slowly in the draft.
He did not know who the child’s father was, and Eleanor never told him.
He knew only that she had summoned him the same night to demand complete silence.
“Nothing about this leaves this room,” she said.
Then she moved to the desk and opened the silver locket.
He saw a tiny painted portrait of a dark-haired woman and an inscription on the opposite side.
Eleanor shut it before he could read the name.
“There are things people will kill to keep buried,” she whispered.
At dawn a wagon took Caleb to Red Cedar.
He never saw Ruth before it departed.
His last view of Hawthorne was the upper window glowing like a watchful eye.
Chapter Three: The Man Who Kept the Names
Amos had a habit of writing no names at all in the open.
He marked boards with notches, tied knots in spare string, and could describe a person without leaving a word for an overseer to confiscate.
He had learned these methods in the carpenter’s sheds of four different estates.
The younger workers believed Amos could tell the hour by the weather and the next storm by the smell of the earth.
Caleb believed Amos could recognize a frightened man from how he held a hammer.
That afternoon Amos walked him through the north barn and stopped beside a cracked central support.
“I know a woman on the river road,” Amos said.
“She helps people move where they can decide their own days.”
Caleb looked toward the doorway.
“If Silas hears us, he’ll sell us both.”
“That’s why I am speaking here.”
Amos tapped the support twice.
“Tonight a cart will come for these broken timbers.”
“And?”
“The driver has a reason to pass the old mill without being questioned.”
Caleb stared at the timber.
“Ruth is at Hawthorne.”
“I know.”
“If I vanish, Eleanor will take it out on her.”
Amos folded his hands.
“Then the question is not only how to get you away.”
“It’s how to keep Ruth from paying for it.”
“Exactly.”
They worked until sunset, planing the new beam while Amos told Caleb about a woman named Lottie Reed, whose husband had been sold after he refused to testify falsely against another man.
She now lived on the river road as a free Black washerwoman with documents proving her status.
