Sarah stared at her. Dina did not finish the sentence; the silence said everything.
That night, lying on her pallet, Sarah listened to the house settling into sleep. The embers popped in the hearth; outside, a hound gave a single bark before falling silent. Her mind worked through the impossible geometry of her situation. Run? She had no papers, no money, and no knowledge of the surrounding counties; slave patrols would run her down within hours, and the consequences of capture were brutal. Appeal to someone? The county sheriff was Thornwood’s associate, and under the law, she was property without legal standing. Comply completely, hoping he would lose interest? His eyes in the study told her otherwise. The trial had already commenced.
The next morning, Sarah carried her meager possessions—a spare work dress, the scratchy blanket, and a small carved wooden comb left to her by her mother—up to the third floor. The room was narrow, containing only a rope bed and a washstand. Its lone window faced east across the vast cotton acreage. Significantly, there was no bolt or latch on the inside of the door. She could be reached at any hour without impediment. The rest of the third-floor corridor was silent, its three adjacent rooms empty and smelling faintly of that same sweet chemical odor she had noticed in the study. The isolation was deliberate: no witnesses, no ears to hear, no eyes to see.
