Dearest Isabelle,
I’d hoped to be with you until the day you married, but it seems God is calling me home soon. Enclosed is my last gift to you—the story of where He intertwined your life with mine.
William and I had a daughter once, born before we left Marseille. She was a beautiful girl who died when she was two. We mourned our loss deeply, our hearts broken. A year later, we sailed for Baltimore in a desperate attempt to escape our grief.
I learned quickly that grief trails a person, no matter where they go, but when we opened our home in Baltimore to men and women searching for freedom, God began stitching together the ragged pieces of our hearts, healing us from the inside.
Then He brought you.
Eliza Duvall showed up at our door late at night, her coachman carrying a beautiful young woman who was grieving just as deeply as I had done. You reminded William and me so much of our Rose, and we rejoiced at the opportunity to love you as our own. Never once did we want you to think we tried to replace our daughter with you. We loved you for the woman you were—and the woman we prayed you would become.
Eliza Duvall returned to our house in 1849, asking for money. We gave her a small sum, but William and I feared that she would return again and again for more. Or much worse, that she would tell whomever had harmed you where you were.
William left for California that summer, and you and I followed soon after. The loss of William tore my heart too, but it was a different kind of grief than losing Rose. William died a hero, trying to provide a safe place for our family.
The book of 2 Corinthians says where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. He never meant for you or anyone else to be enslaved by another. He meant for you to be redeemed and restored in Him. The perfect Father.
Forgive me for not giving you the enclosed documents before, Isabelle. I never thought of you as anything other than a daughter of God, loved for exactly who He made you to be. Compassionate. Clever. Charming.
Cling to His wings—the wings of an eagle—so you can fly. Forever free.
Lovingly,
Aunt Emeline
Isabelle unfolded the other pieces of paper. The first one was a bill of sale for a slave girl named Mallie, purchased for eight hundred dollars. The last paper stated that the slave girl had been set free.
Isabelle wiped her tears with her sleeve. The Labries hadn’t just harbored her; they’d purchased her. But never once had they treated her as a slave. They’d signed the paper for her emancipation long before they’d left Baltimore.
They’d bought her, and then they’d set her free.
“Do you still have to be scared?” Isaac asked.
“No.” She tucked the letter back into the box and locked it. “I don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
Chapter 41
Columbia
August 1854
Victor’s heart raced as he stepped onto the dusty street in Columbia. He felt like one of those bulls in Spain who’d been trapped in a pen much too long. The stagecoach ride here had been worse than sailing up to San Francisco, worse even than taking the dreadful bungo across the isthmus.
His legs were bruised, and he desperately needed a bath and a fresh change of clothes.
All he wanted now was to return to his clean chamber in West End, to his feather bed, with Mallie at his side. He’d spend all night reminding her of what she’d left behind. Then in the morning, Isaac would come in with the paper and coffee and read to them both. Mallie would draw him a hot bath, and he’d dress in a clean suit for a Sunday dinner of roast pork with cold pickles, tea buns, and a strawberry ice cream, made by that woman he’d bought back in Alexandria.
He hadn’t tasted ice cream since he left Virginia.
The farmhouse would fill with his and Mallie’s children, at least a dozen of them. He could picture them all together, crowded around the dining table, Isaac or another one of the boys reading a story to them as they ate.
Then he pictured Eliza, dressed in the homespun uniform and cap of a maid, pouring cups of fine English tea for him and Mallie and their entire brood. The thought made him laugh—and made the gentleman standing next to him step away.
He had to stay focused. Before he could return to Virginia, he had to find Mallie and Isaac. Then he had to rid himself of Alden Payne.
Or perhaps he should remove Alden first.
A gun, he’d decided, would attract unnecessary attention. So he’d stolen a bowie knife from the man bedding next to him in Sacramento. And he’d practiced using it on the bear carcass they’d cooked last night at camp.
