Lenora stepped backward until her calves touched the bed.
“That is impossible.”
“You have said that before.”
“Curtis took it to market.”
“Curtis took it to the old kiln.”
The brass weight slipped from her hand and struck the carpet.
She did not bend to retrieve it.
Isaiah watched her carefully, but he did not mistake fear for innocence.
The woman before him had ordered people beaten for speaking out of turn.
She had separated mothers from children at the dining-room door because their tears embarrassed guests.
Her present terror did not erase those choices.
“How did you find the kiln?” she asked.
“I followed the wheel marks after the rain.”
“You should never have gone there.”
“Why?”
“Because Curtis would kill you if he saw you.”
“He saw me.”
Lenora caught the bedpost.
“Then why are you alive?”
“Because he believes I found nothing.”
She studied his face.
“You are lying.”
“I am alive because I know how to look without letting a man see me looking.”
Isaiah moved to the window and pointed toward the dark ridge.
“Three days ago, smoke came from the kiln chimney.”
“That building has been abandoned for years.”
“Someone carried coal there.”
“Curtis uses it for repairs.”
“Repairs do not require a guard at the back door.”
Lenora’s voice fell.
“You must stop.”
“You asked me to speak.”
“I asked about a wagon.”
“And I am telling you what the wagon carried.”
She raised a hand as though to silence him.
He spoke before she could.
“The woman in that wagon was Mrs. Ada Fenwick.”
Lenora’s mouth opened.
Ada Fenwick was the wife of a traveling carpenter who had disappeared in the valley a month earlier.
The carpenter, Thomas Fenwick, had worked on Whitcomb machinery for two summers.
His wife had taught reading to several children in Harrow Glen before the town trustees forbade her lessons to enslaved people.
Isaiah had met her once at the weighing house when she brought her husband a meal.
She had a low, clear voice and a habit of pronouncing every syllable.
He recognized her voice when she whispered from the wagon.
Lenora lowered herself onto the bed.
“Did you see her?”
“I heard her again through the kiln wall.”
“She cannot be there.”
“She is.”
“You cannot understand what you have heard.”
“Then explain it.”
Lenora pressed her fingers to her temples.
Her breathing came fast and shallow.
Isaiah kept his hands at his sides.
He knew that a woman who felt cornered could turn one frightened cry into a death sentence for him.
Finally she looked up.
“Thomas Fenwick invented something my husband wants.”
Isaiah waited.
“He designed a machine that could cut wooden pieces faster than our carpenters.”
“Why would that put his wife behind a locked door?”
“Because Thomas refused to sell it.”
Isaiah felt his stomach tighten.
“Where is Thomas?”
Lenora looked at the floor.
“I do not know.”
He heard the lie before she finished speaking.
