Lizzie finally understood. She rose to her feet and glanced nervously toward the open window. The air in the cottage had cooled noticeably since she’d arrived.

Reenie was watching her closely. “What you thinking?”

Lizzie felt it. A test. Even after all this time, a grain of mistrust remained. “But how?”

“I can’t…” Reenie stopped as if trying to think of the word. “I can’t explain. A lot of people help this here child. I ain’t the only one.”

“Oh.” That was all Lizzie could think to say.

The child took another nibble of bread. Lizzie looked around the cottage, trying to determine if this was the first runaway slave Reenie had helped. Nothing looked out of place. Only the child.

“When?” Lizzie asked.

“After Sweet died. Didn’t something change for you after that?”

Lizzie searched inside herself. Something had, but she couldn’t really give expression to it. And she certainly hadn’t gone as far as Reenie to act upon it.

“Why you come over here tonight anyway?”

Lizzie looked at her friend. She couldn’t say she had come over to see if Reenie was still seeing the hotel manager. She couldn’t say she had come over to ask how Reenie had gotten away from him and taken back her body. And ask how she could take hers back from Drayle and still maintain favor. The child watched as if awaiting her answer as well.

“Well,” Lizzie began. “I really just came over cause I’m lonely, what with Sweet gone and all.” There. That was enough of the truth to be counted as honest.

“You want a piece of bread?” Reenie asked.

Lizzie nodded.

THIRTY-FIVE

Later, Lizzie would try to put the pieces together and would wonder if the first fire provided the idea for the second. She would recount every little moment of the summer in her mind-from Sweet’s death to Philip’s freedom-and wonder how she’d missed the little signs that had, no doubt, been there all along. She would experience a store of emotions, and it would be months before she would boil it all down to grief.

The crowd at the picnic was the lightest it had been all summer. There were more Southerners in the crowd than northerners, the thick drawls and parasols a telltale sign that the Southern visitors outnumbered the others. Reenie reported that she’d overheard the hotel manager speaking about the situation. Apparently, the northerners no longer wanted to come to the resort as it was being overrun by Southerners. Most of them had shortened their visits. Some were said to be offended by the presence of negro wenches.

Lizzie and Reenie were standing together when a colored child unwrapped a muslin cloth, exposing a small fish inside. She pulled a few sprigs of some kind of herb from her pocket and tucked them one by one into the folds of the fish. Then she wrapped the fish again and placed it on the outer edges of the fire.

Neither of the women knew where the child had come from. They assumed that she belonged to one of the hotel servants and had been assigned to perform some chores for the day. Lizzie and Reenie each held the end of a long stick skewering partridges. They had spent the entire morning plucking the feathers from the birds and cleaning out the organs. Now they held the stick just high enough where it would not catch fire, and rotated it slowly so the birds would cook on the inside before they charred on the outside. Once the birds were done, they slid them off and piled them onto a long board. Then Reenie carried the board over to another table where Mawu and two other colored women from the hotel ladled sauce onto them.

Each time she was given a pail of fresh raw partridges, Lizzie slid the birds onto the sticks, careful to pierce each at its thickest point. As she held the birds over the fire, she searched for Drayle’s face in the crowd. She had not often seen him in the company of the other resort guests, and she wondered what he would be like.

He was standing about thirty feet away from her in a group of men who were smoking. He only smoked when they came to Tawawa because Fran didn’t allow it at home. The men laughed, the scent of their cigars mingling in the air with the scent of the meat.

Lizzie looked with wonder at the colored child kneeling beside her. She was fascinated by free colored children. She wanted to reach out and touch the girl’s head, but she could not take either hand off the heavy stick of partridges. She was so busy looking between the birds and the girl that she didn’t see the white woman approach her.

“What’s your name?”

Lizzie looked around for someone else. But when she glanced into the white woman’s eyes, they were fixed on her. She looked down. She could tell from the accent that the woman was a northerner.

“Lizzie, ma’am.”

“Lizzie. Is that short for something? Elizabeth?”

“Eliza, ma’am.”

“Who do you belong to, Eliza?”

Lizzie tried to figure out where the question was coming from and where it was going. “I belong to Master Drayle, ma’am.”

Lizzie peeked over at the woman and saw her eyes searching the crowd of men.

“Which one is he?”

Lizzie tilted her head. “The one in the tall boots, ma’am.”

Despite the heat, Drayle had not taken off his riding boots and still held his crop in one hand.

“Is he good to you, Eliza?”

Lizzie nodded and said what she knew was expected of her. She remembered Mawu’s question, He God to you?

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

Lizzie took a chance and looked up into the woman’s eyes. The woman looked visibly relieved. “Good. ’cause I can’t stand men who are brutes. A lot of slave owners are brutes, aren’t they? At least, that’s what I hear. That’s why I detest slavery.”

She wanted to ask the woman about the pamphlet, about this Wendell Phillips. Did she know him?

The woman moved on. When she joined the next group of women, she must have said something about Lizzie because they all looked over at her and gave her little half smiles. Lizzie looked at them for a moment and then turned her attention back to the partridges. Her arm was tired. She needed to relieve herself, but her partridges were still too raw to eat.

The child’s fish had cooked more quickly. She unwrapped the cloth to check on it, and Lizzie guessed from its aroma that it was probably just about done.

A white child approached the colored girl and sank to her knees. “Is that fish ready yet?”

The colored child nodded reluctantly. Lizzie could feel the child’s disappointment as she realized that her treasure was about to be taken from her. The servant child put the wrapped fish on the ground. She knew she had to give the fish to the other girl, but her anger would not allow her to hand it over just yet. If the girl wanted it, she would have to pick it up and take it herself.

The white girl smiled triumphantly, and as she leaned over to take the fish, the end of her dress grazed the hot ember. Lizzie saw it when it happened, but she did not know it had caught fire until the child had already felt the heat of the burn on her leg. The white girl screamed and the fish flew out of her hands. She jumped up and ran. Reenie put down the partridges and ran to the well. The colored girl picked up the fish and stuffed its slippery flesh into her mouth with her fingers, sliding the bones out between her teeth.

A white woman threw the quilt she had been sitting on over the child. It, too, caught fire. There were shouts all around as people realized what was happening. One of the men ran after the child and caught up with her before throwing himself on her. They rolled on the ground. The child was still screaming loudly, and the smell of burnt flesh filled the air as the doctor yelled, “Let me through! Let me through!”

Lizzie looked around for Drayle and saw him standing alone, a bit off from the crowd. The ground around him was littered with forgotten cigar ends, still glowing. Only he remained, his fingers grasping the butt of his cigar and his mouth frozen in the round shape of a deep exhale.