Phebe

Bizarre was quiet when the family was in Williamsburg.

Sarah barely tolerated Phebe at mealtimes. "Yo mistress found herself somewhere else to live yet? I knew she was trouble. Didn't I say it, girls?" Lottie and Sally nodded, neither glancing Phebe's way. Sarah's husband, Ben, and her son, Billy, were kinder, but it was only the kindness of wishing a fellow being a good day or sharing a smile at the sight of a cloudless sky. Phebe had been too fine for Sarah's liking, and now she was too low. Her mistress had brought scandal to their door, and Sarah, for all she'd complain about Mrs. Randolph's moods and inconsistencies, had taken her side.

"Imagine folks believing your own sister had a child with your own husband?" Sarah said, shaking her head. "Kind of thing that eats you up inside."

"It's not true!"

"Don't even matter what the truth is," Sarah told Phebe. "Don't matter one tiny bit. Damage is done. Damage is done."

Sarah wasn't wrong, but trouble was, Phebe didn't know what the truth was either. She knew what she'd seen and what she'd heard. Last time Phebe saw Miss Nancy's child, it was breathing. Small. Pale. Breathing. Mr. Randolph had taken it only to come back later and break her mistress's heart, saying the child had been weak, not strong enough to last the night. A tragic loss.

But then came talk of the overseer Johnson, and how Rachel, the woman he kept, had a new child, white enough to pass. How they'd moved to Mr. Randolph's lands south of the Appomattox River. How Rachel had gotten her papers and was free.

The story ate at her. Suppose her mistress was grieving a child that hadn't died but had been taken? Then again, the child had been a girl, and girls were a burden. Rachel had only agreed to take a boy.

Syphax would know.

But for all his seeming kindness, she was afraid to go to him and ask.