Like me.
“That’s the reason the dead don’t stay down, you know. The whole world is turned upside down. Darkies are free as white folks, don’t know their place anymore. If they did, maybe things would go back to normal.”
“She uses that word one more time I’m going to throttle her,” Auntie Eliza said, giving Rachel a hard look. Auntie Eliza’s husband worked out in the fields, and no one talked bad about the field workers when she was around.
“You ain’t the only one,” muttered Auntie Betsy, who was plucking a chicken.
No one much liked Rachel, but she didn’t let that stop her from carrying on. “Mark my words, when the major come home, that woman is gonna be in for a rude awakening. That’s all I’m saying. There’s gonna be a reckoning when the major comes back.” She kept peeling potatoes and tapping her foot, as though she’d like nothing more than to run right out the door.
And maybe, if Rachel had left, things wouldn’t have been so bad when the major finally did return, eight years after the end of the War between the States and smack dab in the midst of the Years of Discord, bringing a discord all his own to Rose Hill Plantation.
When I wake in the morning alone in my bedroom at Miss Preston’s, groggy and with memories of the treacherous Rachel scratching at my brain, I’m in an even worse mood.
But more than that, I am certain that nothing good can come of this dinner at the mayor’s house. Why else would I have dreamed of Rachel, the woman that almost got me and my momma killed?
The curriculum at Miss Preston’s stresses loyalty, and I have to say that my dedication to my fellow students is incomparable. Of course, they share my sentiments. I daresay that there is not a thing Miss Preston’s girls won’t do for one another.
Chapter 12In Which I Become an Unwilling Co-conspirator
The fittings go without incident. I fidget all the way to the dressmaker’s and back, expecting at any moment the driver will pull the iron pony over and Miss Anderson and Mr. Redfern will slaughter us for what we know. But, despite the tension I sensed in Miss Preston’s office, they seem completely unconcerned with both the upcoming dinner party and with me and Katherine. That doesn’t ease my worry, though. They could just be playing the long game, biding their time, waiting to end me and Katherine until after I’ve relaxed my guard.
None of that makes any sense—if they somehow suspected we’d been there at the Spencers’, we’d likely know already—but that’s the way it is with panic. It takes you by the throat and doesn’t much listen to reason.
Days go by, and after turning the events of the previous week over in my head, I can’t decide how I feel about the mystery of Lily and the Spencers. The longer we go without word from them, the more disconcerting the lack of news; but then, the more days pass without any further panic or shambler sightings, the more likely it seems the Spencers simply did leave for another city, whether by choice or by force. It’s an unsettling conundrum, and I don’t like it one bit. It sure would set my mind at ease if Lily were to find a way to tell us what happened.
By the afternoon before the mayor’s dinner party, Katherine’s anxiety seems to have retreated into the background as well, and she is beside herself with excitement. She chatters about it to the other girls, and when they tire of listening to her she finds me and talks my ear off.
“What do you think Mrs. Carr will wear? I wish we could wear a corset, or even a bustle.” She flips the pages in her catalog and settles down next to me in the grass. I’m sitting under the big oak out back, what my momma used to call a hanging tree, the branches spread apart and thick and growing parallel to the ground, a tree perfect for climbing or stringing up a man. When I first got to Miss Preston’s I used to run off and hide in the branches of this tree, climbing as high as I could and hiding amongst the dense boughs. Eventually Miss Anderson discovered my hiding spot. She waited until I finally came down, taking the strap to me so bad that I couldn’t sit for a week. Maybe that’s why there ain’t no love lost between me and the woman. Even my earliest bad memories of the school are tied to her.
Katherine nudges me. “See, they’ve modified it so it collapses and you can sit down. Isn’t that just marvelous? And look at the silhouette.” She thrusts the fashion catalog at me so that I can see the bustle, which juts out of the rear of the woman’s hips and makes her look like a demented wasp.
I push the catalog away. “Where’d you get that?”
Katherine gives me a long look before sniffing indignantly. “Really, Jane, as though you’re the only one to smuggle in contraband. Everyone has a little something, you’re just the only one who gets caught.”
I cover my face with my hands and pray to the Lord above for strength. “Kate, has it occurred to you how odd it is that the mayor would invite us to a formal dinner, just like that? It’s been over two weeks since the lecture, and he didn’t seem to think much of our heroics until a week later. Not to mention the fact that he’s embroiled in some scandal involving the Spencers.”
She gives me a narrowed-eyed look and sighs, pulling back her catalog and flipping through the pages. “I don’t find it odd at all. He’s obviously a busy man. And his
