Cecily can’t keep herself from asking, “You know what happened to her?”
“Rosie says Master Price and Elliott found her over at Mrs. Cowley’s.”
Cecily hadn’t thought to check with Mrs. Cowley, although she might have guessed that someone with her expertise would be in high demand at a time such as this.
“So, Maria’s alive?”
“Last I heard.”
“I looked everywhere,” Cecily starts to say, but even as those three littlewords escape her lips, she knows they aren’t true. She didn’t try very hard to find Maria. It could be because Maria’s always been so difficult, but Cecily is beginning to wonder if, in some deep-down part of herself, she always knew she’d run if and when she got the chance.
“You really think there was a hundred people killed?” Della asks.
Cecily nods. “There won’t be a soul in Richmond who hasn’t lost someone.”
“But I didn’t lose you,” Della reminds her pleadingly.
Cecily reaches for her mother’s hand. “I can’t stay, Mama. Not with Elliott the way he is. He told me Master Price gave him permission to take me with him to his new place. I’m to be a wedding present.”
Della wasn’t counting on that, Cecily can tell. “When’d he say that?”
“Earlier this evening.”
“God damn him,” she whispers. “He knows better than that.”
“Elliott?”
“No, his daddy.”
A rumor has long circulated in the quarters, about how it’s Master Price who’s really Cecily’s father. Cecily has never dared bring it up to her mother. How could she, knowing how much it would hurt her? Instead, she has looked for clues: the tawny color of her skin; the way Master Price’s gaze comes to rest on her, like she is a rare curiosity, when he thinks no one is looking; the fact that Mrs. Price is forever short with her, no matter how nicely she does up Maria’s hair or tends to her frocks.
It is clear Della holds some pull over Master Price. When rations run short or a child needs medicine, she can often disappear up to the main house and get what the family needs. She returns with a bag of rice or a bottle of camphor, and Cecily’s father goes quiet for a few days, but then Della will say, “What would you have me do?” and eventually he comes around.
Cecily would believe the rumors but for two reasons. The first is that her father adores her. And the second is that her mother has never been able to put a stop to the ugly business with Elliott, and Cecily knows she must have tried.
Somewhere above their heads an owl coos.
“Master Price ain’t never going to look out for me, Mama,” says Cecily. “Not the way you want him to.” It is the closest she can come to acknowledging what has long gone unsaid between them.
Cecily watches her mother’s face and thinks she detects the softening of her features, an openness that was not there before. “Where would you even run?” she finally asks.
All Cecily knows to say is “north.”
“North?” Della repeats, with a shake of her head. “That ain’t a plan.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“Running is serious business.”
“I know, Mama. That’s why I need your help,” Cecily pleads.
Della is stewing on something, and finally she takes a deep breath and nods, once.
“So, you’ll help me?” For the first time in a long time, Cecily feels hopeful. Her mother is the most capable woman she knows, and if she turns her attention to spiriting her eldest daughter out of Richmond, Cecily feels sure she’ll succeed.
In the distance a dog barks, and they both jump. Cecily knows the animal isn’t coming for her, but she can’t steady her racing heart. “What do I do now?”
“We got to get you hid.”
