December 1917
Amethyst sat at the big roll-top desk in the log cabin room and shuffled the papers in front of her. She could sit here forever and not be able to decipher the mess her father had called “his books.” The only two items she had found that made any kind of sense to her were the original deed to the property, signed by Col. Robert Warren and Silas Noble, and Grandpa Silas’s will, which left the majority of the tillable land to Enoch Warren.
It had been six months since Father’s death. What little money they possessed had run out, and Mama had yet to lift a finger to help in any way. Mostly she just kept to her bed during the daylight hours and wandered the house at night, a ghostly figure in the darkness.
According to a dog-eared cashbook she found in the bottom drawer of the desk, Grandpa Silas’s will allowed for a small percentage of the crop profits to come to Father. But evidently the summer’s profits had already been advanced to him in May. Maybe he took the money with him. Maybe he hid it somewhere. Whatever he had done with the money, Amethyst couldn’t find it, and as the immensity of the situation became clear to her, panic rose up in her chest so that she couldn’t breathe.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, tears splattering the pages on the desktop. At last she came to herself, blotted the smeared ink, and took a deep breath. The numbers in the cashbook swam in front of her eyes, and in her mind she could see her father waving jauntily as the train pulled out of the station.
Fear and anxiety slowly melted away, replaced by an emotion Amethyst was all too familiar with: rage. Once again, her father had abandoned them. Once again, he had put his needs ahead of everyone else’s. But this time it wasn’t just a temporary setback caused by his drinking and gambling and carousing. This time it was permanent. Abraham Noble had pulled the ultimate disappearing act, leaving his wife and daughter alone and penniless. If he hadn’t already been dead, she might have killed him herself.
“How could you?” she screamed, pounding her fists on the desk. “What kind of man does this to his family?” Fresh tears came—hot, violent tears of anger and scorn—and Amethyst put her head down and sobbed.
A gentle touch roused her—Silvie’s hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right, hon?”
Amethyst looked up. “What do you think?”
“I think you got too heavy a load for a gal your age.”
“I’m almost eighteen, Silvie. I should be able to handle this without falling apart. I should!”
“What you should be doing is attending college over at that Columbus Female Institute, getting an education, like you always planned. What you should be doing is going to dances, meeting some nice beau—not sitting around here taking care of everybody else.”
Amethyst grimaced. “Well, that dream is dead. And you can bet I won’t be looking for some man to sweep me off my feet anytime soon.”
Silvie drew up a chair and sat down beside her. “I know. Mister Abe pretty much ruined all that for you, didn’t he?”
A deep sigh shuddered up from Amethyst’s soul. Silvie was right, and it was just one more reason for her to be furious at her father. For three years she had been planning and waiting for the day she could enroll at the Columbus Female Institute. The school, founded before the Civil War, was practically a legend throughout the South. A college for young ladies, which provided its students with an excellent education and the opportunity to become professional career women—teachers, social workers, nurses. Some of its graduates had even gone on to become doctors.
But not Amethyst Noble. In her room upstairs, an acceptance letter lay gathering cobwebs in the bureau drawer. If Father hadn’t gone off and been killed, she might be there today. Now she had missed her chance—her one opportunity to leave Cambridge behind and make something of her life.
“I have no choice,” she answered after a while. “Mama can’t do for herself, and there’s no one else to take charge.”
“So it all comes down to you.”
“I’m afraid so, Silvie. It’s not so bad, really. I can do this. What bothers me most, I think, is that I have no alternatives.” She shook her head and pointed to the papers on the desk. “And apparently no money, either.”
Silvie peered over her shoulder. “Your daddy’s books?”
“If you can call them that. He didn’t keep very good records. The best I can figure, he took an advance on last summer’s profits, and the money has simply disappeared.”
“You’ve got nothing?” Silvie’s eyes widened.
Amethyst let out a ragged breath. “Not a dime. And taxes on the house are due in January.”
“Maybe you oughta talk to the bank.”
“Apparently Father didn’t believe in banks. Kept everything in cash, here in the house. But you know how he was, Silvie. Every dollar that made its way into his pocket in the morning ended up in the cash register at Colby’s Tavern before nightfall.”
“I hate to mention this, Am, but—”
“But what? If you’ve got an idea, girl, let’s hear it!”
“The—the brooch,” Silvie answered hesitantly. “Your grandmama’s amethyst. I remember when we were little, your mama used to show it to us sometimes, telling us how you would be wearing it on the day you got married, and—”
“I could never sell that!”
“Course not. But maybe you could use it as—” She groped for the word. “As collateral. For a loan, you know.”
Amethyst thought about that for a minute. “Maybe you’re right. Silvie, you’re a genius—an absolute genius!”
The two of them went to the downstairs bedroom—the room Mama had steadfastly refused to enter since the day her father boarded the train and began the journey that ended his life. Amethyst looked around. Nothing had been touched in over six months. The wardrobe door stood open a crack, and she could see the sleeve of her father’s dressing gown sticking out. The book he had been reading lay facedown on the table next to the bed, covered with dust.
“Do you know where she kept it?” Silvie asked, prodding Amethyst into action.
“In the bureau.” Amethyst went to the dresser and began rifling through the top drawer. “It was in a little box—gray velvet, if I remember correctly. Oh! Here it is.”
She retrieved the box and opened it. Nothing.
“It’s empty,” Silvie said.
“I can see that.” Amethyst felt her last hope crumble, and her shoulders began to shake.
“Don’t fall apart now, girl. Keep looking. Maybe it came out of the box and is loose down in the drawer.” Silvie pushed past Amethyst and continued the search.
“It’s got to be here!” Amethyst dumped out the second drawer, then the third, kneeling on the floor to sort through the contents. “It can’t be gone!”
“Where else could your mama have put it? Think, Amethyst!”
“Nowhere. She always kept it right there, in the top drawer. She was very particular about it, I recall. Wouldn’t let me take it to my room for fear it would get lost, and—”
Suddenly Amethyst sat back on the rug, and her heart sank like a lead weight.
“Well, we’ll just have to go up and ask your mama,” Silvie was saying. “Surely she knows where it is.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Amethyst muttered woodenly. “But I do. And unless we want to dredge the bottom of the Tallahatchie River for it, we’re never going to see it again.”
Silvie stared at her. “You don’t mean—”
“What else could have happened to it?”
“Your father knew where it was kept?”
“Of course he did. The only surprise is that he didn’t take it sooner, to pay for his gambling and drinking and women.” Amethyst put her face in her hands. “It was my only hope, Silvie. What am I going to do now?”
Silvie sat in silence for a moment, then put her hand on Amethyst’s arm. “Daddy will help, Amethyst. I know he will.”
Amethyst choked back tears. “I know he would, Silvie. But Bick Littleton hasn’t spoken to Mama since the day she married Daddy and the only Averys left are distant cousins. If I can’t ask them for help, I certainly wouldn’t ask your father. We can’t take charity.”
Silvie looked hurt. “It’s not charity. We’re family—a lot closer family than the Averys or the Littletons.”
“Yes, we are.” Amethyst squeezed Silvie’s hand and felt strengthened, somehow, by the warmth of the touch. “I don’t know what I would have done without you these past six months. And I’m probably going to need your help in the future. But I can’t take your family’s money.”
“All right,” Silvie conceded. “We’ll talk about that part later. For now, what can I do?”
Amethyst shook her head and clenched her jaw so tightly it ached. There was no point crying over a brooch that was gone forever—even if it had been her only link to her grandparents and her only hope for a way out of this financial mess her father had left them with. There had to be another way.
A desperate determination began to flow through her veins. The first thing she had to do was get this paperwork sorted out so she knew exactly what she was dealing with. Then she and Silvie could make a plan. What kind of plan, she wasn’t sure. For right now they would just take it one step at a time.
“It’s worse than I imagined,” Amethyst moaned.
Silvie glanced down at the stack of papers in front of her, and her stomach churned. She felt helpless in the face of this dilemma, and she didn’t like the feeling one bit. Amethyst was her best friend. They were like sisters. She knew her father would lend—or give—any amount of money to help get Amethyst and her mother out of debt, but she also knew that Amethyst would resist with her last breath taking what she called “charity.”
The girl was proud, that much was certain, and her pride was both an asset and a liability. It made her strong, determined. But it also made her bullheaded and stubborn.
“Look at this!” Amethyst went on. “Bills dating back more than two years ago. For renovations—the plumbing for the bathrooms and electrification of the house. For a stud horse named Benedict, an animal I’ve never even heard of. And what’s this one? A hundred dollars for a new suit and a brass-headed cane?”
Silvie winced. “You got records of any of these bills being paid?”
“Not a one.” Amethyst shook her head. “Who in his right mind pays a hundred dollars for a suit?”
“Musta been made out of gold.” Silvie shrugged. “Too bad we can’t bury him in it, but there’s nothin’ left to bury.”
Amethyst threw the bills onto the pile in front of Silvie. “I cannot believe he did this. I see it with my own eyes, but I don’t believe it.” She looked at Silvie, and tears spilled over. “We’ll have to sell the house.”
“You are not selling this house.” A wave of determination rose up in Silvie, and she grabbed Amethyst’s hand. “Look at this.”
“At what?”
“At our hands. Mine’s brown, yours is white.”
“So?”
“So that’s the way it’s been for generations. Your grandfather built this house.”
“Correction. Your grandfather built it.”
“They did it together,” Silvie amended. “They were friends. Like us. They defied tradition and built not only a house, but a family. Your family and mine. Together. And what they created was not just a pile of bricks and lumber, but a home. A heritage. We’re not going to let that go. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“What other choice do I have?”
“We’ll figure out something. God will see us through.”
Amethyst snatched her hand away. “Don’t talk to me about God, Silvie.”
“You believe in God. I know you do.”
“I did. Once. But you tell me—how much evidence have you seen that God is the least bit interested in what’s happening to me and Mama? God didn’t keep Father from leaving us alone and destitute. God didn’t lift a hand to change my father’s profligate ways. What did we do to deserve this? Nothing. It was Father’s doing, and we’re left to clean up the mess. No, Silvie, I’m not about to go begging to God—or anyone, for that matter—for help. I’ll figure this out for myself.”
Silvie didn’t respond. In truth, she had nothing to say. She didn’t believe that God had abandoned Amethyst in her time of need, but it did look that way. And no amount of talking would change Amethyst’s mind about it. The only thing that might move her was some kind of miracle—an unexpected circumstance that would turn things around.
Please Lord, her soul implored, let it be so.
Amethyst inhaled the savory scent of beef stew with carrots and onions and potatoes in a rich brown broth. Thanks to Uncle Enoch, she mused as she stirred the stew, at least we won’t starve.
That was one benefit to living on the land. Even in winter they had vegetables put up from the garden and meat from the smokehouse. The chickens still thrived, providing eggs and frying hens. The root cellar was full of white potatoes and sweet potatoes, and the cupboards were lined with Mason jars filled with canned beans, black-eyed peas, carrots, corn, and beets.
Amethyst had never seen her father take a hoe to the corn rows, or help with grinding the meal or slaughtering hogs or smoking the hams and bacon that hung on meat hooks in the dark, fragrant log building out back. She had never once witnessed her mother anywhere near the kitchen on canning day. But still, miraculously, they always had good food, and plenty of it.
Now that Amethyst was running the household, she knew where it came from. Enoch and his family kept them supplied, sending one of the fieldworkers in to stock the pantry without a single note of fanfare. That, too, she suspected, might be called charity, but she wasn’t in any position to quibble over semantics. It had probably been this way since her grandparents died—the responsible black landowner quietly taking care of the irresponsible white gambler’s family.
What an irony, Amethyst thought. Her own father had been honored among the townspeople as the “master” of the Noble lands, while Enoch was simply tolerated and given a grudging kind of respect as “a credit to his people.” Translation: still a Negro, and in many people’s minds still a slave, but at least one who wasn’t lazy or shiftless.
Amethyst was pretty sure that most of the citizens of Cambridge had no idea that Enoch was the rightful owner of Silas Noble’s land. They undoubtedly viewed him as an overseer, the manager of her father’s holdings. And Abe Noble had probably allowed—even encouraged—the misconception. He might not hold the title, but Abe Noble had the image and the name, and that was what was really important.
Silvie came into the kitchen and opened the oven door to check on her cornbread. “Almost done,” she murmured. “It may be more convenient, but I still contend that cornbread is never as good in this modern oven as it was when it was baked in the wood stove.”
Amethyst turned and grinned. Silvie’s constant lament about the new kitchen was that everything tasted better cooked on the old wood stove. She actually still used it for baking cakes and pies. “The stove’s out on the back porch, and there’s wood in the kindling box. Be my guest.”
“Too late now,” Silvie sniffed. “Where’s your mama?”
“If the cornbread’s done, go ahead and serve up the stew,” Amethyst answered. “I’ll go get her.”
Amethyst made her way up the stairs, sighing as she went. Mama would, as always, be in bed with the quilt pulled up over her and that vacant expression on her face. Sometimes she would come down and join Amethyst and Silvie for dinner, but more often Amethyst had to make the trek up the stairs twice—once to inform her that dinner was ready, and a second time to bring her a tray. “I declare,” Amethyst murmured as she reached the top step. “It’s like having a baby, but without any of the benefits of being married.” What those benefits were, Amethyst couldn’t imagine. She certainly hadn’t seen much in her parents’ relationship to recommend matrimony.
She paused at the bedroom door and knocked softly on the doorpost. “Mama? Can you get up and join us? Dinner’s ready. It’s your favorite—beef stew and cornbread.”
No answer.
The room was dark, but that wasn’t unusual. Mama usually slept a lot, and sunset came early in December. Amethyst walked to the bedside and turned on the table lamp.
“Mama?”
The figure under the covers didn’t move or speak.
“Come on, Mama. You’ve been here all day. You need to get up and move around a little.”
Amethyst gently tugged at her mother’s shoulder. Still no response.
“Mama! Wake up.”
She pulled a little harder, and a bare arm flopped out from under the covers and landed, palm up, on the edge of the bed.
It was blue and rigid.
According to Dr. Noah Ramsey, Pansy Noble had died in her sleep. “I’ve seen it before, I’m afraid,” he told Amethyst. “A wife loses her husband suddenly and unexpectedly—or even after a long illness—and something in her just gives up. Your parents were very close, I assume.”
“Of course,” Amethyst answered woodenly. What good would it do to tell him the truth?
“There’s a special bond between loving spouses,” Dr. Ramsey continued. “Almost as if the dead husband summons his wife from the other side.” He gave her a consoling look and patted her on the shoulder. “I think she just decided it was time to go, time to be with him again. But you can rest in the knowledge that the two of them are together now . . . forever.”
Amethyst stifled a laugh. Amid the swirling chaos of her emotions, all she could think about was how her father must feel at this moment. It had taken him years to get away from Mama, only to have her invade his blissful eternity after a brief six-month respite.
“Serves him right,” she muttered under her breath.
The doctor blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking how right it was, for them to be together again.”
Then the truth hit her with the force of a physical blow. She was an orphan. Alone in this house. Alone in the world. Seventeen years old, without parents, without an education, with a mountain of debts and not a nickel to her name.
Silvie put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered.
But Amethyst knew better. It wouldn’t be all right, no matter what Silvie said.
Nothing short of a miracle would make it all right ever again.