Sophia, to never speak to her again, to disappear into the Underground and cut away that girl who would not be my Sophia. And then another part, a part of me conceived in my mother’s own strife, then reared on the Underground, the part that was dazzled by that “university” upstate, the part that found the wisdom to tell Robert that nothing is pure and thank God—was shocked to find such resentment still curdling in me.
I watched Sophia watch the baby for a moment, then shifted away and said, “So how many of us left?”
“Don’t know,” Sophia said. “Was never sure how many was here to begin with. And for the sake of my own heart, I stopped counting the departed. Surely these are the last days of Lockless. They are killing us, Hi. And not just here. Across Elm County. They are killing us all.”
She sat back down with Caroline.
“But you did come back,” she said. “And you look good for yourself. It has been a blessing of mine to see you return to us, to be reborn, twice in a lifetime—up out of the Goose, and now out of the jaws of Ryland. Must be some powerful meaning, for we are not in Natchez, but right here before each other. Some meaning in us, I think. Some powerful, powerful meaning.”
* * *
—
But the discovery of that meaning would have to wait. I walked back that evening and tended to my father and his supper. Then I descended into the Warrens and joined Thena for supper. There was no ambient action outside the doors, nor in the house above. It felt like we were all alone on some far side of the world, and I understood some of how it must have been in the earliest days of Lockless, when it was only the progenitor and his team of tasking men, with nature closing in around them.
After we finished, we walked outside and sat at the edge of the tunnel to the Warrens.
Thena looked over at me and said, “So you went to see her.”
I looked to the ground and shook my head.
Thena laughed to herself.
“You could have told me,” I said.
“Like you could have told me?”
“Was different then,” I said.
“Naw, the same. You judged it to be no business of mine. I did not agree. But I am struggling to see how telling you that girl was a grass widow would make me anything more than a gossip. There are things between you two that do not concern me.”
She was right. I thought back to that moment when I’d last seen her before running, and I recalled my harsh words and I knew that while I could apologize for the pain I had caused, the break was real. The child had left home. He could not return.
“I’m not even angry with her,” I said. “Wasn’t ever like she was mine.”
“Nope.”
Caroline was, by my estimation, perhaps four months old, which meant that when I ran with Sophia, she was already carrying the baby. And knowing her intellect and independence, and thinking on all our conversations, I understood that she was not simply with child when we ran, but likely ran with me because she was with child.
“Thena, I am feeling that she had reasons to run, reasons that she declined to share with me.”
“Yup.”
“And that has left me…with feelings. Like I laid myself bare before that girl. And when I ran, I did so giving all of my reasoning. Straight down the line.”
“Straight down the line, huh?”
“Yup.”
“Yeah, all right. Listen, I’m gon tell you—ain’t nobody straight down no line, Hi. Least of all two young’uns like y’all two. Hot after each other as you was.”
“I did not lie,” I said.
“Huh. ‘Straight down the line,’ ” Thena said, shaking her head. “You sure about that? You sure you telling everything? I gotta say, I know I don’t feel like I done heard the whole of it. And I would bet my next week’s victuals that Sophia ain’t either.”
29
AUTUMN MOVED TO WINTER and our days grew gray and cool, our nights lonesome and blue. In those early days back, I worked as Roscoe once had, though my duties were lighter on account of the diminished number of guests entertained. The old days of Elm County royalty, of parasols and powdered faces, lady-cake and card-games, the old days when I would amaze whole parties with the magic of memory, were gone. From time to time, older friends, as ancient as my