CHAPTER 22: THE FIRST RELEASE
A settlement was reached after creditors and legal representatives disputed the estate’s inflated accounts.
Elias agreed to documented releases for a limited group in exchange for resolving certain claims against the trust.
Price insisted on witnesses, completed instruments, and careful recording before anyone traveled.
Ruth, Mercy, and Josiah were among those named.
Nathan’s family also obtained papers through a separate arrangement supported by recovered trust funds.
Several others remained at Oakwood, and the incompleteness of the result cast a shadow over the day.
Josiah could not call it a victory for everyone.
He did call the written instruments a beginning that could not be left to anyone’s word alone.
Ruth examined Mercy’s papers as carefully as her own.
She asked Price to explain each line in plain language.
She wanted to understand what the documents claimed and what they did not guarantee.
Price did not conceal the dangers awaiting freed Black people in a country still shaped by slavery and discriminatory laws.
He discussed travel, identification, and the importance of retaining copies.
Isabella watched from across the office but did not interrupt.
Elias refused to attend the final signing.
Josiah felt no regret at his absence.
He had spent too much of his life listening to the man’s voice decide the movements of others.
When the papers were complete, Ruth took Mercy outside into the sunlight.
The child asked whether they could go to the river now.
Ruth said they could make plans together.
The word together made her pause.
She looked toward Josiah with tears in her eyes.
He knew the papers did not restore what had been stolen from their family.
They did make a future possible in which another person could no longer lawfully sell Mercy as part of an account.
CHAPTER 23: A ROAD WITHOUT GUARANTEES
Josiah and Ruth left Oakwood with a small group traveling under guidance arranged through Price and trusted contacts.
They carried the documents in separate oilcloth packets to reduce the risk of losing everything at once.
Abel stayed behind because his own position remained unresolved.
Before Josiah departed, Abel pressed the young man’s hand and told him not to let guilt turn freedom into another burden.
Josiah promised to keep looking for ways to help, but he would not pretend he could solve every danger from the road.
Ruth embraced Abel and thanked him for insisting that their family names be spoken accurately.
Isabella stood near the carriage with a travel bag of her own.
She was leaving for Baton Rouge to testify in the continuing dispute over Elias’s accounts.
Josiah did not offer a sentimental farewell.
He told her to keep telling the truth when no one was watching and when the cost became inconvenient.
Isabella said she would try.
Ruth corrected her gently but firmly.
“Choose to do it,” she said.
Isabella accepted the correction.
The road north was uneven, and every stop required caution.
Josiah learned that freedom could be accompanied by fear without becoming less real.
At a river landing he watched workers load cargo beneath the same harsh sun he remembered from Oakwood.
He could not forget the people he had left behind.
Ruth reminded him that remembering them did not require surrendering the life they had fought to reach.
Mercy slept through most of the journey with her doll tucked beneath her coat.
When she woke, she asked where they were going.
Ruth said they were going to look for family and build a home.
For the first time, the destination was a choice they had made rather than an order written by somebody else.
