I stopped at her bedchamber door, curious to know what Grandfather was hiding from me. Perhaps my mother was still alive and the answer to all the secrets was behind this door.
I didn’t think twice but went into Grandfather’s bedchamber in search of the keys. My heart pounded so hard, I could hear the beating in my ears.
Finally, I found a key ring and then quickly replaced everything I had dislodged in my search. I returned to my mother’s bedchamber door, and with shaking hands, I slipped several keys into the lock until I found the right one.
When it clicked, time felt like it stopped.
Tossing a glance over my shoulder, I slowly turned the knob and then slipped into the dark room, closing the door behind me.
My breath was shallow as I looked around, holding my lamp high. The room was nondescript. A four-poster bed, a bureau, a washstand. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting—but nothing so normal or ... simple.
Perhaps Grandfather wasn’t hiding something.
Disappointment weighed down on me. I had hoped this room would reveal the answers to my questions, but there was nothing. I opened each of the drawers and looked under the bed, but it was all empty. Nothing remained of my mother.
My legs felt heavy, so I walked across the room and sat on the bed, holding the lamp in my hands. I wanted to cry, but I had learned at an early age that it didn’t make anything better. I wanted to pray, but I wasn’t sure that God would listen. Did He hear the pleas of a marked woman?
The lamp cast a shadow over the wall, and I noticed a slight variation in the wainscoting. Frowning, I set the lamp on the nightstand and moved across the room. When I reached the wall, I ran my hand over the boards and felt a piece shift.
Slowly, I removed the panel and sucked in a breath.
There was a hole behind the wall, and within it was an envelope.
With trembling hands, I lifted the envelope and brought it backto the bed. Sitting next to the lamp, I opened the envelope and pulled out the thin paper within.
My mouth slipped open as I skimmed the page.
It had been written by my mother, and she had dated it December 1706—three months after I was born and about the time I had been brought to my grandfather.
I leaned closer to the lamp to see the words my mother had penned twenty years ago.
I suspect you will hate me, Caroline. As much as I hated my mother for abandoning me and leaving me in the care of my father, Josias Reed. He tells me she died in Salem in 1692 but refuses to tell me how or why. There can only be one reason a woman of her age died there that year and it is kept a secret. She was a witch. Did she curse me? Is that why I must suffer through two lives, because she hated the child she bore?
My pulse thrummed in my wrists. My mother also had two lives! I continued to read, filled with both panic and exhilaration to know I wasn’t the only one.
I hate myself for leaving you with my father, but the difficult life you’ll lead with him will offer you more advantages than the difficult one I’ve chosen for myself. You might wonder why I don’t abandon my life in Nassau, but that is the trouble with love, isn’t it? We give up anything that makes sense to be near the one who makes us feel the most alive. That is what your father does for me. That is why I am returning to him. I left before my pregnancy was obvious and will never tell him of your birth. You would not be safe if he knew you existed.
I write this to you now because I wish my mother had left me something. A morsel, a grain, even a speck of correspondence. But, mayhap this will only make you angrywhen you read it one day.Ifyou read it one day. I wish I could explain why I’ve left you—why I left South Carolina in the first place—but it will only hurt you more. I’ve never told anyone the truth about my lives, and I wouldn’t expect you to understand it, either. I shall carry the secret to my grave, though that inevitable day feels closer and closer. I might only be fourteen in this life, but I’ve lived for twenty-eight years. Mayhap when you read this, I will no longer be alive. But that might be best for you and anyone else who knows me.
The letter ended on that final, fatalistic note.
My mind spun with all the implications. My mother had two lives, just like me. She’d brought me to South Carolina to protect me from my father. Would he have harmed me if he knew she was pregnant? And whowasmy father? Grandfather said the sea merchant my mother ran off with was a cowardly, weak man. Surely, he wouldn’t have wanted to harm his own daughter. More importantly, she said she was returning to Nassau. The only thing I knew about Nassau, Bahamas, was that it was the Republic of Pirates until nine or ten years ago—and it still had a reputation for depravity and crime. Pirate leaders like Benjamin Hornigold, Blackbeard, and Charles Vane had either been pardoned by the king or killed, but there were still some pirates who plied the Caribbean.
I looked away from the letter, the possibilities endless. My mother could have been associated with the pirates. But was she still living in Nassau? I desperately wanted to understand what was happening to me, and she was the only person who might have the answers.
I heard a footstep on the stairs and quickly blew out my lamp. It was Grandfather’s tread, slow, heavy, deliberate.
His footsteps didn’t even pause or hesitate by Mother’s room, and a few seconds later, I heard his door open and close.
I let out the breath I was holding and slipped the letter back intothe wall before closing the panel. After waiting a few moments, I left Mother’s bedchamber and locked the door.
Nanny would be asleep above the kitchen, and the house would be settled for the night. I would need to work fast if I was going to get away without notice.
Nothing would stop me from finding my mother.
2
MAY 21, 1927
