“I told you,” he says. “You arenotgrieving.”
Della struggles to speak. “Cecily went to the theater that night, same as Miss Maria.”
Sally can’t stand watching this. “Mr. Price,” she says in as dignified a manner as she can manage, “I don’t mean to intrude, but I have come to bring your sister home, at your request, and I wonder if you and your parents might have a few minutes to discuss her care going forward.”
Elliott pulls his eyes away from the whipping post and stares Sally down. “I don’t remember requesting you accompany her.”
“I mean,” Sally stumbles, “that she is here at your request.”
Elliott laughs. “Spending two days putting cold compresses on my sister’s head hardly qualifies you to meddle in our family’s affairs.”
Sally clears her throat. “I wouldn’t presume—”
“Elliott?” comes the wavering voice of Mrs. Price from the porch. “What are you doing with Della out there in the yard?”
“Go back inside, Mother,” he says as he winds the whip into a tight coil that sits in the palm of his hand. Then he leans in close and tells Della, “I wouldn’t count on my mother offering you much in the way of protection.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Sally sees Mr. Price coming around the other side of the house. He bellows his son’s name. “Put down that whip!”
The boom of his voice startles Elliott, and he lowers the whip, but does not drop it.
Mr. Price is trailed by a tear-stricken boy, who has to be Della’s son. “That woman is not your property,” yells Mr. Price. “She is mine!”
“And don’t we all know it,” Elliott sneers.
If there is an insinuation in the statement, Mr. Price ignores it. He moves closer to his son before repeating himself. “I said to put down the whip.”
There are murmurs among the people who are watching from the edge of the yard.
Elliott reminds Sally of a trapped animal. Ready to chew his own leg off if it’ll set him free.
“Moses here tells me you think Cecily is alive,” says Mr. Price.
“I don’t think it, I know it.”
“What proof have you got?”
“She saw her,” Elliott says, pointing a finger at his sister.
Maria, who looks frighteningly pale, comes to stand beside her father. “I wasn’t in my right mind when I said that.”
“Sir,” says Sally to Mr. Price, “it’s true. She was experiencing severe delirium.”
“I don’t remember him asking you for your opinion,” says Elliott, and Sally snaps her mouth shut.
“I’ll take her opinion,” says Mr. Price, “over the opinion of a man who refuses to accept his losses. No matter how painful they might be.”
Elliott drops the whip in the dirt, and kicks it out of his way as he makes for the house. “This is a pile of horse crap,” he shouts at his father. “But if you want to give up looking for a perfectly good slave, just because you got hoodwinked by her mother, then so be it.”
“Leave her mother out of this.”
“I’ll just find her myself.”
“Elliott,” says Mr. Price, like he is speaking to a small child. “You will do nothing of the sort.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“I forbid it.”
