I was dressed, but I had no energy to rise. My heart was heavy.
Mr. Foden passed last night.
I’d finished nursing my new baby when Cells took me to the Anna Catharina Plantation. At his bedside, I held Foden’s hand and memorized my friend’s death mask. I made it a part of my heart. No man had been as good a pa to me, not even my own.
Easing into the rocker, I looked into the cradle. This bundle of joy slept suckling her thumb. Birthing my daughter was easier than my son. Cells stayed by my side. He and I watched this baby breathe air and grab for me like the world was owed to her.
I liked that about her.
I liked the notion of my daughters owning the world. I’d convince Cells to call her Catharina. The way he doted on little pink her, I had no worries that jealousy would deny this request. The way he looked at me, holding me in our bed so gentle and tender, I knew he’d understand.
The happiest four months of my life passed in a blink of my eyes. Catharina was healthy and Cells was good to her and Edward and Charlotte.
And to me.
I fought the shadows of birthing sadness and fretted over fears of the strangest things. Said stupid things about dying and hating childbirth.
Coseveldt understood my nerves. He was so loving and dear.
We had small squabbles when his letters arrived making him cross. Some deal or something hadn’t worked as he intended, but a day wouldn’t pass before he was reaching for me and making amends at night.
With my papers to become manumitted rolling in my palm, would everything change? I waved good-bye to Captain Owen on the porch. He gave me these this morning and lined out all the monies agreed. Foden’s last act of kindness was to get Pa to settle for forty pounds apiece for the ransoms. I had twenty times that two years ago. If Pa had been easier, I could’ve borne Catharina free.
Poor, dear Mr. Foden. Gone. The way he loved life, it was so hard to accept he was gone.
My eyes leaked. Another full-on sob seized me.
Kitty swooped in, dancing. She sat on the floor toying with my open portmanteaus, flipping a lid, tugging a buckle. “I can go with you when you tell Mr. Cells. I don’t like you sad.”
My sister hated me being weak. Her stories of getting neat Polk to mix muddy clay for her made me laugh.
Kitty’s childlike joy, her art, helped me escape most of the heaviness of my heart.
Still my sorrows shouldn’t be on her shoulders. I planted Mamaí’s smile on my face. “See about Edward. I need him strong when we go on the boat next week. Charlotte and I will be minding Catharina.”
Kitty offered me a hug. “Cells has the baby now. That should bring you cheer.” Her grin widened. “He can’t get enough of that baby.”
Good. It was good he was that way with our second child.
Then he shouldn’t be too angry about my friends helping to arrange our manumissions. When I tell Cells about going to Dominica to certify my freedom, maybe he’d come too. Crumpling the papers in my palms, I went down the hall.
My knock on the door was light. Then I barged inside.
Cells reclined in his chair, humming to our daughter.
Catharina was pink with a fuzzy head of thick black hair, not thin like mine and Edward’s. Her eyes were a darker hazel than Coseveldt’s.
“Dolly, she’s beautiful.”
“Mr. Cells, I’ll take Catharina back to her cradle.” Kitty had followed me and poked her head into the doorway. “Then you two can talk.”
He gazed at me, then gave Catharina to Kitty. “Good night, my princess.”
Kitty brushed past. The door to his office closed. Cells and I were alone.
He stared at his hands, then the stack of documents on his desk. When he looked up, his eyes seemed distant. “Polk said you’re going away?”
“For a little while. Mr. Foden negotiated with my pa. The terms of manumitting me, Kitty, my mother, and our children have been settled.”
“Oh, I thought it was an expansion to your business. King has said how good your services would be across the West Indies.”
Cells was in one of his moods. Something in his papers must’ve done it. I offered him mine. “Why don’t you come to Dominica with us? Then, once my ransom is done, we can go across the sea together. As a freewoman, there’s no better dream than being with my family. Sailing with the man I love. You can show me England and Scotland.”
“I can’t—we can’t.” Cells plowed through my pages then dropped them on a pile next to a goblet. “I never did this for you. Foden did. I’ve let you down often.”
Bending behind his chair, I put my arms about his neck. “You’re busy with your dreams. Rum sales are up. Cells, we’re good. We’ve found each other despite difficulties.”
He clasped my hands then gently tugged free. “I’m . . . I’m not going to be here when you return.”
His stutter was soft. His leaving wasn’t business. Rounding in front of him, I stared into his eyes. The windows of his soul said I didn’t have his love, not anymore. “Why don’t you tell me about her?”
“Her?”
“Yes. Why else would you have to go away? Whenever you do you come back different. Your mood becomes sad and guilty when you read your letters from abroad. Has to be a her.”
He rose and slurped his rum. “The her is Fanny, my wife.”
“Wife? I thought she died when your son—”
He shook his head. “No. We’ve been separated a long time. She wanted her parties and London society. I wanted adventure. I had to make myself a success.”
“Wife. You’ve been lying.”
“Not saying. Omitting.”
“Lying, Cells. That’s lying.”
“I asked for a divorce. She agreed. We did the paperwork. I was free. My vows said to God were done. That’s why it took me a month longer to return to you before. I came back free.”
I put my arms about his waist. “You’re divorced then, so she has no hold on you.”
He moved from me. “Fanny went to the Sheriff’s Court, then the Scottish Court of Sessions to seek redress. To stop our divorce, she filed a Declarator of Marriage to overcome our Declarator of Freedom. It’s been dangling over my head since Edward’s birth. Fanny is ruining my chance at happiness.” He picked up a folded piece of parchment. “The court has ruled in her favor. I’m still married.”
“Filing paperwork did this?”
The yellowed thing with creases fell to the floor, gliding like a creased cracker leaf.
“Fanny and I wed when we were young. She didn’t know about me, nothing of my race, just my family. When our son died, I confessed. She hated me. Now she’s sick and doesn’t want to die alone. Her priest keeps writing me to make things right.”
“You’re Catholic again?”
“Always was, but I can sit through any church service.” He put his fingers in his black hair like he wanted to crush his skull. “Her last months should be of peace. Now I can make things right for her. Offer her what we never had.”
My breaking heart stopped cold. “Offer her what?”
“I’m going back to Fanny. I’m taking Catharina with me.”
I fell into my chair, the chair I stupidly sat in to sup, to discuss our days, our children. “No, Coseveldt. No.”
“Dolly, she’ll fit in my world. She’ll be educated and have everything, even the things that I can’t.”
“You want Catharina to pass for white so she can live with your fears of being rejected?”
He winced. “It’s for the best. You can go build your dreams. You don’t need a baby whose birth makes you so sad.”
I popped up and slapped him, as hard as I could. “You bastard. You think business comes before my children? You think my being sad means I don’t want my child?”
“You’ve sacrificed time with Charlotte and Edward and me to grow a successful business. To get what you want you must. I understand that now. I won’t ask you to give up what you love or to slow down. If you were a man, no one would think to ask.”
Cells was smart using every fear—from the birthing sadness to failing my dreams—against me. I gripped his waistcoat, ripping at his buttons. “Don’t do this. If you must go, go, but don’t take Catharina.”
“This is best. You’ll never have to explain the past to Catharina. You’ve let Charlotte believe she’s mine. You never told her who her real father is. You want to hide just like me.”
“I never lied, Cells.”
“You never mention the truth, but I love Charlotte. I wish she was mine.”
“Then you’d steal her, too?”
He bit his lip and looked down. “Catharina Cells doesn’t need to be manumitted, doesn’t need to know any of the horrors you’ve lived. She’ll be mine and Fanny’s free daughter.”
His words echoed, plummeting down the hole in my soul. White or Black, Cells was a man. He had dominion over the child he claimed and the one he didn’t. “How can you do this?”
Cells rubbed his jaw, which still held my red print, red on his light skin. “Catharina will have a real future in England.”
“Because she won’t be a concubine wife, like me.”
He went back to his desk, pulled out his purse, and dumped coins. “For Edward’s manumission. I love him, but he will stay with you.”
“Because his skin is dark. And this money is your forty pieces of silver?”
“Don’t hate me. Don’t let my boy hate me.”
My lungs gasped now. “Then what am I to say to him?”
“That vows said to God matter.”
Had to remember I was still standing, not falling through the floorboards.
Cells clasped my shoulders. “Dolly, this is not what I wanted or planned.”
How could he look so hurt when this was his doing?
The last time he shoved coins at me I had batted them away. This time I scooped them up for what he owed our beautiful son. “Pocket change for Edward. My earnings will free him. Mine.”
“Live at the Hermitage, Dolly. I’ll leave you in control. Your business is doing well. Stay here.”
“You want me here, waiting for your return, waiting for some woman to die to regain a life that was a lie? Never. You chose you and Fanny, not us, not the family we built.”
He tried to hold me, but I ran.
Cells’s footfalls followed.
I locked myself in the nursery and dropped to Catharina’s cradle.
He pounded the door. “Mrs. Randolph. I need the key!”
Time had run out for this dream. I was to lose another daughter. “Catharina.”
She smiled and puckered her lips.
I gave her all I had, a blessing. “My pickney dem, my little, littlest girl, I love you.”
The door creaked. In silence, Cells slipped inside, put my papers in my hand, and stole our daughter away.