Gilbert wonders if it’s bad news for Cecily that Maria made it out alive. He can’t see why it would matter. “Did Maria know anything about Louisa?”
Lecretia nods her head real slow. “They sayin’ she was with her till the end.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I said.”
“Are you saying Louisa’s dead?”
“Nothing’s certain,” says Lecretia, “but it’s looking that way.”
It feels like something thick has lodged in Gilbert’s throat and he can’t get it out. For the second time that day, his eyes begin to water.
Lecretia looks down at the dustpan and taps it against her skirts. “I’ll let her know you waiting.”
Gilbert is dying to tell Sara about Cecily, but the last thing he wants to do is give her one more reason to worry right now. “Make sure she knows it’s fine if she can’t make it. I just ain’t sure when I’ll be back. Kemp’s watching me close.”
Lecretia makes like she’s about to go back inside the house. But then she turns and says, “I heard about what happened at the green.”
With this new information about Louisa swirling around inside his head, Gilbert can barely focus on what she’s saying.
“General Preston’s footman, Fergus, was there. Said it was something to behold. All those white folks cheering for what you did.”
How had he managed to convince himself Louisa was just going to turn up somewhere? Like she’s some kind of trumpet mushroom that only appears after a hard rain?
Lecretia is still talking. “Fergus says he don’t know the last time he saw a Negro, who wasn’t swinging from the gallows, get the attention of a crowd like that.”
“That’s a nasty thing to say,” says Gilbert.
“I’m just repeating what he said, is all.”
“They was grateful.”
“Think you’d have gotten a hand-clapping like that if you had caught a bunch of colored ladies?”
SALLY
Sally has to ask twopeople for directions to theEnquirer’s offices, but eventually she finds the right place. At this time of night, the bookshop is closed, but she can see a lamp on in the print shop, and she pounds on the door until someone—a man—emerges from the back of the shop.
The man’s hair looks like it hasn’t seen a comb since Thursday morning, and he doesn’t even get the door open before he points to a sign with the store’s hours. “Can you not tell we’re closed?”
Sally notices that the man’s fingers are stained with ink. “I’m looking for Thomas Ritchie.”
“That’s me,” he says in an exasperated voice, and Sally is the tiniest bit surprised. She assumed he’d be a little more composed.
“I’m Sally Campbell. I want to talk to you about the fire.”
Ritchie looks skeptical. “I’m meeting with someone right now.”
“Sally Henry Campbell,” she says, putting the required emphasis on her maiden name. “Mr. Roane is my brother-in-law.”
He immediately lets her in, and she follows him through the print shop to an office in the back of the building.
She is barely inside the little room when a delighted voice booms at her from the settee. “Mrs. Campbell!”
She can barely hide her disappointment. “Mr. Wirt.”
“It has been too long!”
