Chapter Nineteen



For the third time in as many days, Clay Palmer rode his horse through the Gardners’ gate. Sarah was waiting for him on the porch this time. “He’s down to the orchard again.” She nodded her head in that direction.

“He expecting me?”

“I told him you’d be coming.” She squinted down at him. “Glad you didn’t give me the lie.”

Clay’s heart had been in the pit of his stomach the entire morning – he guessed it showed. “I can’t live like this, Sarah. I have to have it settled, one way or the other.”

She nodded and went back into the house. Clay walked to the back of the farm lot and down the winding path to the orchard. The bloom was past, but withered petals still littered the ground under the almond trees and the sound of bees buzzing in the hives filled the air.

Jim was digging a shallow trench between the trees and he looked up at Clay’s footstep. His jaw tightened. “Well. You’ve certainly got nerve, I’ll give you that.”

“Not nerve.” Clay walked closer. “I was never this scared, even before a battle.”

Jim’s eyes flickered, but he hardened his glare. “Do you have any idea how much I want to hit you right now?” He dropped his spade and clenched his fists.

Clay had never known Jim to hit anyone, even when they were boys. “Go ahead, if it will make you feel better.” It was with great surprise that he felt Jim’s fist connect with his jaw and found himself lying in the trench, mud seeping through his clothes. He felt his glass eye pop out and he covered the socket with his hand, gasping.

“What are you trying to pull?” Jim said, breathing heavily. “I didn’t touch your eye.”

“My glass eye,” Clay said. “It popped out. See if you can find it.”

“I forgot you had a glass eye.” Jim unclenched his fists. “Damn you, don’t make me feel sorry for you.”

“Not my intention,” Clay assured him. He sat up, still covering his eye.

“Here it is.” Jim stooped down and picked up the rounded piece of glass. “It’s all muddy.” He reached down and grasped Clay’s wrist, pulling him to his feet. He put the glass eye into Clay’s hand. “You can’t put it back in like that. Better come up to that house and get cleaned up, I reckon.”

“Can we talk first, Jim?” The fire seemed to have died down in Jim. Whether it was because the blow had provided a vent for Jim’s feelings, or whether it was pity, Clay did not much care.

“I suppose.” Jim crossed his arms, then dropped them to his side. “How could you, Clay? How could you have thought such a thing of me? No one has ever done me such an injury before.” He spread his hands. “I don’t know what to do with this.”

“I’m sorry,” Clay said, for what felt like the hundredth time. “Lucy was unhappy; we were both unhappy. We had a big fight the night she died – I felt such guilt and shame, and then you told me about the baby, and it was like a mountain had fallen on me. It was more than I could bear, Jim. Can you understand?”

Jim looked at him a long moment, reddening. “Yeah, I guess I can,” he croaked at last. “But you should’ve come to me, Clay.”

“I should have,” Clay said. He paused. Might as well get everything out at once. “Except I wanted to kill you. I even came to your house one day, intending to do just that.”

Jim looked startled. “What stopped you?”

“Abigail.”

There was another long pause while Jim considered this. “I’m not sure that would’ve stopped me.”

Clay put his hands on his knees, weak with relief. “I think, deep down, I must’ve known it couldn’t be true.” He straightened. “Will you forgive me?”

“Eventually, I guess,” Jim said. “You’ve got to give me some time, Clay. You hurt me powerful deep – I don’t think you can imagine how deep.”

“I think I do, and I’ll do whatever you wish of me.”

“Well, go up to the house, clean up, put your eye back in.” Jim unconsciously closed one eye. “Then grab a spade and come back and help me, if you’re serious.”

Clay walked toward the house, his eye clutched in his muddy fist, his heart lighter than it had been for weeks.



Marguerite wrestled the bulky portrait down the stairs. The stairs had seemed wide until she had tried to carry a four foot canvas down them. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath and felt her burden lifted from her grasp.

“Let me help you with that.” Alex carried the painting down the stairs and set it down to look at it. “Where are you going with this? It’s not finished.”

Marguerite contemplated the empty space on her canvas, the central figure yet to be filled in. “And I can’t, not like this. I’m coming to realize that I don’t know my father at all.”

“So where are you taking it?” Alex looked alarmed. “Not to dispose of it, I hope.”

“There’s only one person who can help me fill in that blank.”

“Ah,” Alex said approvingly. “Jacob. Good idea. Let me hitch up the buggy. Unless you’d like me to carry it for you?”

Much as Marguerite would have loved to have the strong cowboy back her up, she knew she had to do this herself. “Thank you very kindly. The buggy, please. You understand?” She looked up at him under half-veiled eyes.

He looked down on her warmly. “Yes, I think I do.” He put his hand on her arm. “And I’m proud of you.”

She breathed in deeply. Oh, it had been such a long time since anyone had said that to her. She felt one petal on her heart open up, unfolding to the sun of his approval. “Thank you.”

She reined in the buggy at Jacob’s gate and began to climb out. He must have heard her arrive, for before she could set foot to the ground he had stormed out of the house and through the gate. “How dare you!” he thundered.

She said nothing, only turned the painting to face him. He froze in place, turning pale and not breathing for long moments. He clenched his fists. “What is it you want?”

“Tell me about him, about my father. Clay’s told me some things, but I – ” she spread out her hands. “ – have such different memories. The last time I saw him – ” she gulped and touched her cheek as though she could still feel the bruise after all these years.

Jacob looked up at her, meeting her eyes for the first time since they had found each other. She held his gaze, for all that the intensity of it frightened her. Looking away would be a betrayal, and she had betrayed him enough.

He glared at her for long minutes, then turned away. “Bring it in,” he said brusquely. He stalked toward the house, leaving her to struggle with the painting alone.

Jacob took it from her inside the house and set it up on a chair in the parlor. He crossed his arms to regard it. “What are you trying to do here?”

“This is what I had inside me, battling to get out.” She stood behind and a little to the side of him. Benjamin’s figure seemed to step out of the painting to embrace them both.

“You think I should care?” His voice cracked.

She looked up at him – he held his face stony with an effort, but his eyes were red-rimmed. “I think you do care,” she said quietly.

“Do you care?” He whirled around to her. “All these years, the only word from you was that he’s dead. No word how, no word where he might be buried. Nothing. Then you bring me this, and I don’t know what to think of you.”

“My heart turned to stone when he died. I’ve barely had a thought for myself, let alone anyone else.”

Jacob grimaced, then gestured at the painting. “No stone heart painted that.”

“I’m being. . .broken, is the only way to describe it. God has me on his anvil and He’s pounding me. It’s not a pleasant experience.”

“You don’t have to let Him.”

“I think I do.” She looked at the painting again. “For so long, I’ve been running away from all this, but the problem was that wherever I ran, I took myself with me.” She looked up at him. “If you wanted me to suffer for my sins, then I have. If that’s any comfort to you.”

He turned from her, covered his face with his hands. “I don’t want to hate you, but I do. He was all I had, and you took him, and you never cared enough to come tell me about it.”

She bit her tongue. You still had someone to love you, many someones. She tamped the unjust thought down. She was beginning to see how unlovely she was – if Jacob had earned the love of others and she had not, then that was no fault to cast against him. Against herself alone. “I’ll tell you now, if you want, but it will hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you anymore. Tell me what you want.”

He wiped his eyes and turned back to her. “Yes, tell me. How did he die? Where is he buried? Did he have a Christian burial, at least?”

She sat down on the sofa and he sat next to her. As she began her tale, she could feel the pounding of God’s hammer on her heart. She chose to endure it for Jacob’s sake, and for Benjamin’s.

She told the story as simply as possible, an account of happenings, nothing more. She would leave it to him to judge her. He turned away from her, shoulders shaking, when she told of his son’s death. She reached out a hand toward him, but refrained from touching him. When she had finished, he still turned from her. “Please go now.”

She stood and took the painting, but he stopped her. “Would you leave it? Just for tonight? You can come back and get it tomorrow.”

Her heart raced. She could come back – the door was not slammed in her face, at least not yet. “Of course.” She put the painting back on the chair and let herself out.

Clay was riding past but pulled up when he saw the buggy parked outside the gate. He was covered with dried mud and looked terribly weary, but smiled broadly. “What happened to you?” Marguerite asked.

“Penance,” he answered. He looked her over. “What happened to you?”

“The same,” she said. “Odd that this is the day we both decide to take our medicine.”

“Not so odd.” Clay tied his horse to the back of the buggy and assisted her into it. He took the reins. “Why the buggy to go half a mile?”

“I brought the painting,” she explained. “It’s a bit awkward to carry.”

“Ah. So that’s why he let you in.” He looked in the back of the buggy. “He kept it?”

“For awhile. I told him what happened, when Benjamin and I escaped, how he died. He didn’t throw me out – I feel like it’s almost a miracle.”

“He’s a good man. Very fair and honest. I know he’s been hurt, but he’ll treat you fairly for all that.”

“I need more than fairness, Clay. I think you can understand that.”

He nodded. “Indeed I do. We both need Grace, and it looks like we both got a piece today.”

She contemplated this for the few minutes it took to drive to the ranch. When she had believed in those theological virtues, they had not seemed real. Now that she no longer believed, their reality was undeniable. She sighed. She had been a child then, a believer in fairy tales, as all children were. Harsh reality and her own choices had killed that child and she had allowed nothing to grow in its place. Until now. Why now? Nothing she had done in the ensuing years had earned her this Grace. Nothing. . .until she had chosen to stop running. And it hurt – oh, how it hurt, but she had never felt more alive. She glanced at the mud-spattered man next to her. She thought she might be beginning to understand that courage was the key to that door. The key to absolutely everything.



She felt silly driving the buggy back to Jacob’s house the next day, but she would need to transport the painting back – if he had not changed his mind and refused to see her. She put her hand to her head; she might be sick at soul, but she felt it in her body. Chest, head, stomach, even her knees, all felt weak and sick. She mustered up what courage she had and knocked on the door.

Jacob answered it, not with a smile, but not with a cold, hard glare, either. He ushered her into the parlor where the painting still resided on a chair. He stood in front of it, arms crossed. “What will it take for you to finish this?” His voice, so hard when he had spoken to her before, was soft now.

She spread her hands. “I don’t know. I know you and Clay see him as a hero, someone admirable. I can’t.” She touched her cheek again, absently. “The last time I saw him,” she gulped, “he struck me, cursed me. How can I forget that?” She turned to him, looked up into his eyes. “It’s not how I want to remember him. But it is.”

Jacob frowned, staring at the canvas. “He was deeply ashamed of that, you know.”

“Ashamed of me, you mean.” She looked at her hand, her dark skin. “That he had such a child.”

He looked down at her. “No, don’t think that. He was proud of you.”

She staggered back as though from a blow. “Proud of me? How can you say that?”

Jacob sighed. “He was a sculptor – very gifted. Would have won great renown, I’m sure, if his father hadn’t died when he did. If he hadn’t left everything such a mess.”

“Clay told me some about the mortgages, and such.” Her brow furrowed. “I never knew he was an artist.”

“When your talent began to bloom, when he sold your first painting, he was proud enough to burst.”

She bowed her head and murmured. “Ironic. That was the moment when I first felt my slavery.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled. “I’m sorry. What he wanted for all of us and what he could do for all of us were so far apart. He had to take and use every resource at hand to keep from sinking. They call it being ‘underwater’ when what you owe is more than what you own. May as well call it drowning, because that’s what it was. For twenty years, he saved us all from drowning.” She looked up at him then. He spoke with such passion. “His death on the battlefield – well, he’d been a hero long before that. Every day, he sacrificed more and more of himself, of everything he cared about, to save us all from the auction block.”

There were tears in her eyes, which she blinked back hurriedly. “I never knew.”

“He never meant for you to. Nor for Pamela, although she figured it out, when she went to plead for you.”

She was not sure that now was the time to ask, but she had to know. “Is that why he sold my mother?”

“Wait here.” Jacob stalked off abruptly. She frowned and sat on the sofa to await his return. He came back a few minutes later carrying a small parcel wrapped in an oilcloth. He carefully unwrapped it and placed it gently in her hands. “I found this among Lucian’s effects after he died.”

It was a bronze sculpture, about eight inches high. A young woman gazing down at the baby in her arms. Marguerite might have thought it was religious in nature, if Lucian had been Catholic, or if she had not recognized some of her own features in the woman’s face.

“My mother?”

Jacob nodded. “And you. It’s the only piece he could not bring himself to sell, apparently. Now do you believe that he loved you?”

She could not stop the rush of tears this time, nor the choking feeling in her throat. She covered her face with her handkerchief for a few minutes until she could contain herself. “And her?” she asked at last. “Did he love her?”

“He did. And he was ashamed that he did – he had such a horror of being like his father.” Jacob leaned forward. “But he meant to free her – when he bought her, he meant to free her. His father died the same day, and then we were all in the soup.”

“Start at the beginning,” Marguerite said. “How he met her. He was married – surely he couldn’t have meant to make an honest woman of her.”

Jacob shook his head. “I can only tell you what I saw – his feelings about her were not something he would speak to me about.

“He had sold a large commission, his first major sale, in Louisville, and he was walking to the train station when he saw her, chained with a bunch of other slaves being taken to the docks to be sent South.

“Lucian told me later that she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and I have to concur. She was lovely – smooth skin, ripe as a peach, large brown eyes. He thought it was a sin for something so beautiful to be in chains. He was flush with money, so he negotiated with the slave trader right then and there and brought her home to find the house already in an uproar over Old Mr. Carr’s sudden death.”

“How did he die?” Marguerite asked.

“Drink. The doctor said apoplexy, but it was excess of alcohol. He was an old reprobate,” Jacob said grimly. “I shed no tears over him – he’d already sold off all my other children, and if he hadn’t died when he did, we’d have all ended up sold for debt. I’m sorry Lucian was left with that burden, but it was certainly the lesser of two evils.

“Lucian put Azalea into my care while he dealt with his father’s business. Cynthia, Mrs. Carr, chose that moment to have another attack, so things were quite disorderly for awhile.”

“What sort of attack?”

“I’m being unfair,” Jacob admitted. “Cynthia had what the doctor described as ‘delicate lungs’ and she always seemed to use her illness as a means to get her way. We had all come to believe that she wasn’t really ill until she was close to death.

“Lucian’s marriage was complicated. It wasn’t an arranged marriage, as such, but his father had been the driving force behind it. Cynthia was pretty enough, her family had money, it seemed like a good match on the surface. If Lucian had any idea what she was really like, or what it felt like to be in love, he wouldn’t have married her.

“And then she found herself suddenly poor, with a husband who was falling in love with a servant girl, and it must have been agonizing for her, and probably contributed to her death, but she shouldn’t have made Lucian give Azalea up.”

“Why did he, if he loved her?” Marguerite asked.

“Honor.” Jacob’s voice grew grim. “She made him promise, as she was dying, that he’d sell your mother. And she made him promise to sell her to New Orleans, so he couldn’t go back and find her later. Maybe she did suffer because of it, but it was still a hateful thing to make him promise. Like a dagger to his heart, but he couldn’t go back on his word. That’s the kind of man he was.”

Marguerite contemplated this, still fondling the figurine. Where lay honor? In keeping one’s word, or in doing right? If the two were at odds, how did one decide? She shook her head. What did she know of honor? Who was she to judge her father so harshly, when his entire life had been spent rescuing her and everyone she knew?

She stood then. “May I keep this for awhile? It may help me focus.”

Jacob put his hand on hers, curling her fingers over the statue. “I think – I think you should have it. Lucian would want that.”

“But – “ she felt herself tear up again, “ – it’s yours. The only piece of his you have.”

“It’s yours. Look at it, and tell me it’s not.”

She stared down at it. The mother she never knew gazed down at the child she was no more, yet she felt herself somehow embraced. “All right,” she croaked. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Jacob nodded at the canvas. “Finish it. Do him justice.”

Marguerite nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all I ask,” Jacob said. He carried the painting out for her. She could feel his eyes on her as she drove away, clutching the statue to her chest.