Drayle convinced Lizzie he was doing this for her as well. Because she’d asked and he respected her wishes. She’d known it all along, she said to herself. This would be the good deed to answer all other favors. A man, he would most likely argue later, could only give up so much of his property.

When the barber arrived to bring the money, the small group of slaves watched from afar, Philip among them. The daughter was not present to help, so the assistant laid out the tools and rinsed the brass bowl. It appeared to Lizzie that the barber’s arms moved with especially exaggerated flourishes as he whisked the cloth off Drayle’s face and brushed the white man’s shoulders clear of fallen clips of hair.

The assistant removed the rocks from the back legs of the rocking chairs so the men could sit upright. The other three white men paid the barbers and took their leave. The assistant cleaned up the tools and left Drayle and the head barber on the porch alone. The slaves could see the gray-haired man resting against the rail, his white coat blending with the white of the wood.

“You reckon you gone be able to leave with him today?” George asked.

It sank in for Lizzie that Philip would not be returning to Tennessee this time. And if this were really their last summer at the resort, she would never see him again. She tried to etch his features into her memory as she had done to her friends when she was nine years old and being sent to the auction block. She hoped this time the memory would stick.

“I don’t know,” Philip said, unable to hide his joy.

“Well, it ain’t like you got nothing to pack,” Mawu said. “You probably just gone climb in that there wagon and be on your way.”

“Maybe you’ll get a whole new suit of clothes,” George said. “You gone enter the barbering trade?”

“I don’t know. I gots to pay the man back his money. But the onliest thing I know is horses. I ain’t like these cityfied folks.” Philip brushed at a fly crawling on his forehead.

“You gone learn quick,” Reenie said. “Tell me, Philip. How do freedom taste?”

Philip looked at her and smiled. “Miss Reenie, I got to say I honestly don’t know just yet. I reckon I won’t know till I get my free papers.”

Lizzie studied Drayle and the barber and saw that neither had changed position. She knew that Drayle had Philip’s papers in his pocket. She had looked at them just that morning and run her fingers over them. The papers looked real, sure enough. Written up by someone in a flowing and official-looking script, even better than those of the old man on the train up from cincinnati.

“You be sure to send me a letter, Philip. Even if you’ve got to get somebody to write it for you.” Philip could not read and write, and Lizzie wondered if he would learn now that he was free.

Philip reached out for her, and she hugged him for a long time. His chest felt warm against hers. She remembered the nights she had spent in his cabin, how he had kept a respectful distance. She’d always appreciated that. But now she wished she would have let him take her just one time. To remember him by. It wouldn’t have been much for her to give herself to him. At the time, though, she’d felt differently. She’d seen being with Philip as a way of disrespecting her children’s father. But now she knew she could have done it. She could have shared something with him a little more than friendship and a little less than love.

The good news was that now he would get real happiness. She felt protective of him. Tender. And jealous all at the same time.

“He got them!” George exclaimed. “He got the papers!”

Philip released her and they both strained their eyes to see if it was, indeed, a paper in the barber’s hand.

“Hallelujah!” Reenie shouted.

Mawu turned to Lizzie and spoke quietly. “That was a good thing you done.”

Just as they’d thought, Philip left with the barber that very afternoon. Each of the slaves gave him a token to take with him. Reenie gave him a wooden cross her brother had carved for her years before. George gave him a nectarine he had stolen from a nearby orchard. Mawu gave him a sack containing some herbs she said would protect him from evil spirits. Lizzie gave him a note she had carefully written the night before containing the address of the plantation in Tennessee.

That night, Reenie told Lizzie as they drew water at the well she would no longer have sex with the hotel manager. Lizzie replied she had not known that it was still going on. Reenie looked at her with a half-surprised expression and continued to pump water. Lizzie remembered the summer before when Reenie’s own brother and master had promised her to the hotel manager. All of them had seen Reenie making the evening walk to the hotel for the remaining days of the summer. But since none of them had seen Reenie making that walk this summer, they’d figured that the relationship had ended.

But it obviously hadn’t. If he was bold enough to continue the relationship across summers, then he would not take no for an answer. Reenie’s master had made a trade of some kind, and most likely he would have to give up whatever the manager was giving him in order to free Reenie of her obligation.

In the days that followed, Lizzie saw less and less of Reenie. A week after their conversation, she went to Reenie’s cabin to see if the woman had really been able to end it. The men were gone for the night on an overnight camping trip, and since she figured Reenie would be obligated to the hotel manager on a night they were gone, she wanted to see if her friend was in the cottage.

She saw a light in the window and went around to the back door. She tapped.

“Miss Reenie?”

She saw the lace curtain in the kitchen window inch back. A moment later, she heard the floorboards creak. The door cracked open.

“What you want?” Reenie answered. Her eyes moved past Lizzie.

“I just came to talk.”

“You by yourself?”

“Course I’m by myself.” Lizzie looked behind her just in case. Reenie was making her nervous.

Reenie opened the door just enough for Lizzie to slide through.

Lizzie looked around once she had entered. “Are you alone?”

Reenie grabbed her arm. “What you mean?”

“What’s wrong with you? I’m just asking. And I thought I heard something besides.”

Reenie scooted a chair into the middle of the floor. “Sit,” she commanded.

Lizzie obeyed.

Reenie went to the closet and stood before it. “If you tell anybody, she dead. If you tell anybody, you gone have blood on your hands.”

“Tell what?”

Reenie opened the closet door. A girl peeked out.

Lizzie’s hand flew to her mouth. “Who is this?”

“Shh!”

The girl began to cry.

“Hush, baby,” Reenie said. “Miss Reenie gone take care of you.” She took a piece of bread out of the basket and handed it to the girl. The child broke through its hard crust with her teeth. Then she scooped out its soft whiteness with her finger and stuck it in her mouth.

Lizzie looked the girl up and down. She was dressed like a slave. Or, at least, she was dressed like a slave trying not to dress like a slave, wearing pants like a boy and a large shirt tucked into them. The shirt wore a patch across the arm as if the sleeve had been ripped off and then put back on. Her hair was cut short like a boy, too, but there was no mistaking the soft feminine features.

Reenie wiped the girl’s runny nose with her own sleeve. Then she tucked her sleeve in to hide the wet spot.

“Whose child is this?” Lizzie wondered if the older woman was going crazy. They had all been grieving since Sweet’s death. And Reenie had been through a lot over the past year.

Reenie pulled the girl in close. “She mine and she yourn, too. She belong to all of us.”

“What are you saying?”

The child relaxed and leaned against Reenie. “She come up from Kentucky. Them free women in the hotel done asked me to look after her for one night. She be on her way tomorrow.”