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Clara leaned back in breathless, wordless confusion. Had he misunderstood her simple offer? The bargain was a good one. Noise garbled up. “I believe that is what I said. My surgery for their freedom. ”

The teacup jerked from her hands, warm wet poured into her lap. Reverend Merrick gripped her shoulders. “Who are you to play with life and death?” His seething breath swept across her, shaming her.

“You are making this complicated.” Clara shook her head. “It doesn’t have to be. Simply agree with Mrs. Ramshaw and let me go. As soon as Christmas has passed.” Clara’s throat constricted. “You don’t want to send a kind old woman to jail do you?” A threat she didn’t mean to make.

“I will spare you no detail. Say what you will to the sheriff or your father. He left Kentucky for more reasons than one and don’t believe for an instant that you were his only or even primary problem.”

“What are you talking about?” Whatever did he mean?

“Are you familiar with certain evils committed by cruel men towards women?”

Clara’s throat constricted. “What are you insinuating?”

“Morrie. She was raped. Repeatedly. This time, she expects a child. You want to know who raped her, Clara? Your father.”

Hot tears slipped in fury. “ How dare you .” Clara trembled, his hands squeezed her shoulder. Kept her in place.

“She’s not the only one. There are others.”

No. No, no, no . “That’s against the law.” Wasn’t it? How did he know this? Mrs. Ramshaw? “If it’s true, they would have asked for help.” Her Father? Never...

“In this town? You honestly believe these girls have rights? And you think you are bound by shackles of darkness! There is no way out, no help unless we get them out and away from here. God does not want us to stand by and watch.”

“Your words are noble, but I assure you my father would never do this.” He was a married man.

“By what are you certain? Jenny saw him, Clara. ”

Clara shook her head. “Jenny?” She must have been seeing things. Jenny was getting old. A memory pushed forward. Father at the slave cabins. Being slapped...Silence ever after.

He removed his hands from her shoulders and stood. “She begged me not to tell you but I can see that you refuse to believe the truth of it anyway.” He huffed.

“I do refuse to believe it. The charges you lay at his door are slanderous.”

“Clara, I swear on the Bible that Jenny does not lie.”

“I suppose you have proof.”

“Morrie carries it before her every day.”

“That is not sufficient.”

“What would be sufficient, Clara?”

“I don’t know! I’ve never heard what you are telling me. I don’t even know if I can believe you!” Surely she would have heard something. Sensed a problem between her parents...

“These are difficult times. A slave has no rights. No help. No representation. I might have spared you these words if you had not suggested this selfish bargain. None of us wish to hurt you.”

“Nor did I want to offend you, Reverend Merrick. I only saw it as a means for us all to get what we want. I never desired to stoke a fire...I...” A consuming fire. Life, piece by piece was being burned away. Ash leavings and a charred future. Suppose it was true.

“I don’t know what else to say. It might not help, but your father isn’t the only one who helps himself to the slave women. Mrs. Ramshaw can tell you stories, if you want to understand the reality better.”

Clara tucked her hands into one another. What had she done? Possibly lost the remaining trust she had with the kind people who looked after her. “Hopeless...” she whispered. Nothing was simple anymore .

“Depends on how you look at it. I have all the hope in the world. God sees everything, He has a plan. For you, Clara, if you will have it. For Morrie and her baby. For Jenny. Mrs. Ramshaw. Myself.”

Her head swam.

His hands gripped the back of her chair. “Think on what I have told you. Pray. You must pray.”

Hardly hearing a word he said, her mind twisted, her heart sank.

He spoke again, but not to her. What did he say? “I ask that you heal Clara’s vision, in the name of Jesus in whom I put my trust. Amen.” His words tumbled over her. Bitter tears coursed down her face, fists kneaded the apron in her lap, a pull, a tear. Her own father, evil? How? Why ?

She hadn’t sensed another presence.

“You will not compromise Morrie’s escape.” Mrs. Ramshaw’s voice quavered. “And you are not getting that surgery until we hear from your father, as difficult as that is. And perhaps not even then.”

What care they for approval if he is as treacherous as they say?

Daniel spoke. “Can you keep guard...”

Clara lurched from her chair. She’d run home. Surely, she’d get there. A pair of hands forced her back down into her chair. “Don’t even think about it.”

“I wasn’t going to tell anyone,” she whispered.

“I wasn’t really going to tell.” She sounded like a whining child.

Her chest squeezed with pain, she doubled over.

No surgery. No bargain—a strangeness invaded, her thinking grew cloudy.

Her father’s grave sin would sully whatever remnant of honor the Stanton name still held.

Did honor belong only to the seeing? Her tightly knotted corset trapped her lungs.

Gasping. She couldn’t get air...To think she’d smugly offered such a plan. ..

It was over. These friends would never trust her again. Shamed. Trapped.

Darkness, and more darkness.