“I’m here alone,” says Mr. Scott.
The answer is evasive, and Sally knows Margaret won’t like it, so she tries to steer the conversation into safer waters. “Do you like Diderot?”
Mr. Scott blinks at Sally. “Not particularly.” She waits for him tocontinue, to argue that Diderot was an atheist or even that his plots are flimsy. But he doesn’t justify his position.
Margaret can’t let him off the hook. “Is there perhaps another playwright you find more appealing?”
“I’m not much for plays,” he says and looks relieved when Archie announces his arrival in the box with a booming “What have I missed?”
There are more pleasantries and the puffing up of chests, the display of plumage. Sally removes her coat and, noting that the men have taken all the straight-backed chairs, secures an empty bench that has been pushed up against the box’s railing. She pulls it out and takes a seat, placing her jacket and a small handbag beside her.
Over the next few minutes, Sally watches the theater fill.
The pit, two stories below, is a sea of people who never stop moving. Tickets to the pit are cheap, and the seats are few and far apart, so most people abandon them altogether, choosing to spend the duration of the performance on their feet, mingling with their neighbors. At the front of the pit sits the orchestra, its members tuning their instruments to the hum of the crowd.
Sally can’t get a good look at the colored gallery, not from where she sits, but she can see into the boxes on the opposite side of the theater. She’s searching for people she knows. None of her brothers and sisters, with the exception of Fayette, spend much time in Richmond, but her cousins—particularly on her mother’s side—do. Lots of the girls she grew up going to parties with in Lynchburg and Farmville have married well enough to spend Christmas in the capital.
Margaret joins Sally and whispers in her ear, “That Mr. Scott’s quite the Don Quixote.” Then she gives Sally’s shoulder an affectionate bump, and Sally puts her head in her hands and lets out a low laugh that could easily be mistaken for a growl.
“What do I keep telling you?”
“I know, I know,” says Margaret. “You’re not ready.”
“And when and if I am,” Sally says, tossing a quick glance behind her, “please, God, not him.”
Margaret lets out a loud sigh.
“But I do appreciate it,” says Sally, trying to be serious.
“I just want to know that you’re going to be all right. You can’t live with your mother forever.”
“Can’t I?” Sally says, and both women allow themselves an earnest laugh.
It was universally acknowledged, among Sally’s friends and family, that she had been right to let go of the Marysville house. She stayed on there for more than a year after Robert died, but without the store, she had no income; it soon became obvious that the rent would deplete what little she’d inherited.
Sally thought about returning to Red Hill, but by then her mother had remarried and gone to live at her new husband’s home in Buckingham County. The Red Hill property, which Dorothea would have been entitled to keep until her death, had she not remarried, went instead to Sally’s youngest brothers, who were ill-equipped to manage a henhouse, much less an entire estate.
When push came to shove, Sally had stored her furniture and household goods at Red Hill and sent her personal effects to her mother’s. Then she’d packed a trunk and gone visiting. Her friends and relations were always happy to have her and she worked hard to be useful and to never overstay her welcome. Still, over the last two years, she’d grown weary of the constant travel and longed to settle down.
“My mother’s got a piece of property, Seven Islands, that my father intended for one of us girls.”
“Where is it?”
“Halifax County. Just across the river from Red Hill.”
“Wouldn’t you be lonely, out there all by yourself?”
Sally doesn’t have a good answer to that question. Maybe Margaret doesn’t realize that she always feels lonely, even when she is surrounded by people, even on a night like tonight. Especially on a night like tonight. “I’d have Lettie and Judith. And Andy.”
“Sally Campbell,” says Margaret, as if she is scolding one of her children. “Your slaves do not count.”
Behind them, Tom Marshall says something that puts the rest of the men in stitches.
Sally lowers her voice. “What choice do I have, Margaret?” It took her stepfather the better part of a year to unravel Robert’s finances and to convince a judge that, with no heirs, Sally deserved more than the dower’s share of her husband’s estate. He won her the household furniture, the livestock, Robert’s meager savings, and the couple’s slaves, which didn’t feel like much of a victory considering Sally had been the one to bring them to the marriage in the first place.
Margaret presses her lips together and casts her eyes about the theater, as if she is looking for a good distraction. She points at the box directly across from theirs. “That’s the governor and his wife.”
“The man with the big stock buckle?” Sally doesn’t recognize him, but then again, she hasn’t been to Richmond since he took office. “He’s handsome.”
