That night, Keturah agonized over how to make amends with Mitilda. Belatedly, she recalled Bennabe mentioning how Mitilda had helped everyone remaining on Tabletop survive . . . which only made Ket feel worse. Mangoes were a large part of that. Weekly harvests from her garden plot were the rest. Ket was deeply ashamed of how she’d acted. Needing to be away from her sisters in order to think, she paced her father’s room, pausing to trace the seashell-lined window wells with her fingers.
She thought once more of the frames he had made for Mother and how she had stowed them away as soon as he’d set sail. He had loved Mother, and when she refused to come to the West Indies, he’d tried to bring a piece of the islands to her. He must have been very lonely here . . . but did that excuse his taking up with another woman?
Keturah sighed. There was no innocent. The blame could be shifted in either direction. And what choice had Mitilda had? Ket thought back. Abraham was about eight years old. Nine years ago, the woman had been, what . . . seventeen, eighteen? What had Ket been like at that age? Could she have withstood the advances of a man, without protection, especially as a slave?
No, likely not. Had she herself not gone along with the plan to marry Edward, despite her trepidation? Why, she’d never uttered one question, one complaint.
Keturah leaned over the windowsill and looked out at the glory of Tabletop’s view. Sloping landscape, in shades of green, down to a turquoise sea lapping at creamy sand. She brought her eyes back up and fingered the finely crafted shutters, folding so easily—even in the island’s humidity—allowing in the gentle welcome breeze. Her fingers traced her father’s carefully laid lines of shell. She knew each one, because he had sent them samples as part of his monthly letter, and the girls had committed each to memory.
The multicolored and conical Triton’s trumpet. The bespeckled lines of the hawk-wing conch. The crenellated spiky curls of the Latirus shell, appearing like a tiny fairy fortress. The creamy-tea stripes of the measled cowrie. The pristine white shape of the Atlantic cone. The freckled Atlantic cowrie that always made Ket think of an old woman’s toothless grin. The milky white of the Caribbean vase shell. The oddly obscure and smooth flamingo tongue, its ridges worn smooth by sea and sand. And her favorite, the West Indian crown conch, which was essentially every color one might expect from the earth.
Oh, Father, she thought. If only I had known you as well as I know these shells. I . . . I behaved despicably today. To someone you likely . . . loved. But ’tis all such a mess, Father. How could you have left us in such a state? How could you have up and died, abandoning us all?
She paused as her trembling clarified something. She was angry at Father. Angry at him for the trouble he had left behind. For not providing for her and her sisters. For leading them into danger and chaos rather than saving them.
Just as she was angry at God.
Neither her earthly father nor her heavenly Father had prevented her from marrying Edward. Neither of them had rescued her as she suffered, day after day. Neither had given her a way out.
Or had they?
Was this not her opportunity? Her rescue? A chance to make a life here on Nevis with her sisters? To determine her own future? For the first time in a very long time she felt the brush of her heavenly Father’s presence. She closed her eyes to the breeze coming off the ocean and into the room.
She could no longer reach her earthly father. But could she not reach out to her Lord and God? Take comfort in Him once again? Oh, Lord, how far I am from you. Her breath caught as she realized the vast divide that had occurred, and how her anger had driven Him farther away. How far?
And then a breeze rose outside, wafting the brush and palms to and fro, then upward, inward, across her. Ket closed her eyes again, letting it wash over her.
“How far . . .” she whispered sorrowfully.
But He was not far at all. For the first time in forever, her Lord felt near. Positively near. On her skin, covering her, filling her ears, washing over her . . .
“God. Lord,” she whispered, sinking to her knees.
Child, daughter, beloved were what she heard in response.
“Father. Savior,” she returned, swallowing hard.
Then, at last, Protector. Comforter.
“Oh, Lord, I’ve fallen short,” she whispered. “In so many ways. I’ve been so angry,” she rasped as tears ran down her face. “So angry for so long. I blamed you for letting me marry Edward. But it was my choice. My parents’ choice. A terrible choice. Forgive me for blaming you, for becoming angry at you for a trial of our own making. For not turning to you . . . you who could have brought me healing. Comfort. Even in the midst of the trial.”
She braced her hands on the sill and felt the shells against her forehead as she wept. But she welcomed the bite, the pain of them, as if they echoed the memory of her pain. She cried for her departed father and mother. She cried for the death of her own innocence through the years of marriage with Edward. She cried that she could not bear children. She cried for her sisters and their own losses. She cried for Mitilda, a slave girl put in a terrible position, and Abraham, a boy who would never know his father.
On and on she cried, until she believed she had no more tears to weep. She was empty, but for the first time in a long while, she felt cleansed.
As she rose to her feet, she felt the shadows of Edward’s dark memories splinter and shard and fall from her shoulders.
The damage. The hurt. The injustices.
The discouragement. The shame.
Like thin shells drying for years in the sun, she broke through them, casting them to the sea—thrusting them out to the Atlantic and Caribbean like spikes meant for the depths, never to return.
Because Keturah was new.
Reborn.
And with God beside her, there wasn’t anything or anyone who could defeat her again.