Phebe

After the trial, everything was worse, not better. Miss Nancy was subdued. The brittle cheerfulness she'd maintained all winter disappeared. If anything, she was more lost than when it first happened, and she wouldn't say nothing about what had gone on at the courthouse. There was chatter in the kitchen house, of course, talk of the sisters' aunt causing trouble, of division in the Tuckahoe family, of the sisters going at it in the carriage on the way home.

All Phebe knew was that something had changed. Miss Nancy kept even more distance from Mr. Randolph. Spent long hours gazing out the window or with a book open on her lap but never turning a page. Her spirit seemed drained right out of her. A dozen times, Phebe went to speak up about the baby she'd lost. About the child growing up with Rachel, across the river. Fear that she was wrong stopped her tongue from wagging. Fear her words might hurt more than they'd heal.

Then Mrs. Randolph lost the child she was carrying. Miss Nancy took the news badly. Shut herself up in her room for three days, weeping, refusing to eat, unable to sleep. The house was quiet. In the kitchen house, Sarah shook her head and pursed her lips. Bizarre, so often full of overnight guests and the sound of Dick Randolph making merry, grew quiet. But there was still a child in the house, and when Phebe took him to Miss Nancy's room, it was Saint that brought her back to something like herself.

"At least we have you," Phebe heard her whisper as he snuggled in her arms and twisted his fingers in her unkempt curls. "I won't let you down, I promise. I have done terrible things, little one. But not to you. Never to you."

The next morning, Miss Nancy was already awake when Phebe arrived with warm water and fresh linens. She washed and dressed as if the past days had never happened.

"Here." She waved Phebe over to help pin her hair. "I am thinking about returning to Tuckahoe. But only when my sister is well enough to look after Saint. You would welcome that, I think?"

"Yes, miss."

"Good." She nodded. "But the boy comes first. I will never be a mother or a wife, Phebe, I know that now."

"But—"

"No. You don't even know the worst of it. Of me."

"I—"

"I said no." Her voice shook. "This is the last time I'll speak of what happened, Phebe. What I heard at the trial convinced me of my wrongs. I believed myself unfortunate, but I have been the author of my own woes in more ways than even you know. The moment I see Judy looking after Saint as she should, we will go to my father. I'll beg him for shelter if I must."

Later, Phebe thought, that was the moment. That quiet May morning, with Miss Nancy calm and determined. With the light slanting in the window and the sound of the plantation stirring to work outside. Why didn't Phebe tell Miss Nancy her suspicions? What had stopped her? A lack of courage? The fear that it was not her place? Or the selfish hope that Miss Nancy's talk of Tuckahoe raised in her?

But before Miss Nancy was satisfied that Saint would be cared for, a lawyer's letter reached Bizarre. Thomas Mann Randolph Snr had died. His passing was sudden — his heart, the letter said. There would be further communication when the estate was settled, but Tuckahoe, the house, the land and its people were now the property of Gabriella and her son. The family at Bizarre was not invited to the funeral. The road back to Tuckahoe was closed.