“Curse?” I asked. “To know our mother? To know our kin?”
“What kin do you know?” He spun on his heels and stormed toward me. “Who else have you met?”
I would never tell him—not if he whipped me until I died. “I have met no one.”
“How did you find this woman?” he asked, looking at Grace, probably hoping to find a more obedient witness.
“Ann told us,” Grace lied. Ann was already in prison. What more could Father do to her? “Rachel lives in Salem Towne.”
She made it sound like Ann had met Rachel through her connections there. It might be true, but it wasn’t how we had met her. I admired Grace for not giving in to Father’s demands. There was no telling what he would do to Pricilla or Isaac if he knew the truth.
“Why have you come here?” Father asked Rachel next.
She flinched and looked at each of us, terror in her eyes.
“Have you come to spread the destructive teachings of your Quaker beliefs?”
Rachel shook her head. “I do not follow the Quakers.”
“But you have—you were born of Quakers.”
“Were we not born of a Quaker, as well?” I asked Father in a steely voice.
He breathed heavily through his nostrils as he sliced his hand through the air and said to Rachel, “Be gone from here. And do not darken my door again. Do you understand?”
Rachel’s face was ashen as she fled from the kitchen without looking back.
Father stared at me, and I knew I had pushed him beyond reason. “What hath she told you about your mother?” he asked through a clenched jaw.
I would not cower before him. “We know she was hanged and that you did nothing to help her.”
Remorse and pain flickered in his eyes, but it was soon covered by righteous indignation. “You know not what you speak of, girl. She was warned—I warned her—and she heeded me not. She was headstrong and stubborn.” He shook his head in disdain. “She was exactly like you. And if you do not heed my words, you, too, will hang at the end of a noose, and I will do nothing to stop it from happening.”
I inhaled a sharp breath, his words cutting deep.
Grace cried out in shock and took a step toward me, but Father moved between us and turned to me.
“Do not see that woman again—or any of her family. This is my one and only warning.”
Father turned and went up the back stairs, probably to console his wife, while I stood rooted to the spot, plagued by his words.
Grace wrapped me in her arms and held me tight. “Do not listen to him,” she whispered.
“He would see me hang, like he saw his own wife hang. Thereis no love in him, Grace. Just anger and bitterness and self-righteousness.”
“There is fear,” she said as she continued to embrace me. “He fears that which he cannot control—that is why he feared Tacy and why he fears you.”
My tears came then—not only for what he had said, but because I was stuck here with no escape.
A knock at the back door made both of us jump. Rachel wouldn’t have returned, would she?
As Grace left me, I turned my back to the door and wiped my cheeks with my apron.
“Good day, Isaac,” Grace said, her voice strained.
Isaac?
I turned and our gazes met across the kitchen. His smile fell, and he stepped past Grace. “What’s wrong?”
