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“Reverend Hall … why, no, ma’am,” said Katie, “—what about?”

“He was here just two days ago asking about some lady and her little girl. And you say he wasn’t out to Rosewood?”

Katie shook her head.

“I don’t know what it’s all about. He wouldn’t tell me who it was or why he was interested in them, but he had a serious expression on his face. Just seems like a strange coincidence, that’s all.”

Katie turned and walked back to her horse, leaving the bewildered woman staring after her, not sure what to make of Katie’s visit after the other two she had had recently.

Katie rode back to where I was waiting for her out of sight and told me what she had heard.

“Do you think the minister’s looking for Aleta?” I asked.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to worry about that later,” said Katie. “What should we do now?”

“I guess there’s nothing else for us to do,” I said, “but to keep following him, that is if we want to know what he was doing.”

After a few more stops, the man rode off in a direction that at first seemed to be toward Greens Crossing. As he got closer, Katie began wondering what we would do when he got into town. We couldn’t follow him up close, or let people see us.

But then at the fork in the road, he turned off in the direction of Oakwood.

By now we had been gone more than an hour. We looked at each other, wondering what to do. But we had come this far without finding anything out. If we turned around now, we would know nothing. So we continued to follow.

But then suddenly everything changed when he turned off the road at the sign leading to the McSimmons plantation and my old home—and Emma’s too, as we now realized.

Again we stopped. But by now our curiosity was so high it didn’t take us long to decide to keep going. After all Emma had said and what I knew myself, I was beginning to have even stronger suspicions than before. As we drew closer, we let the man get out of sight, and I began to get nervous all over again. I tried to tell myself that I had nothing to worry about and that I was free now and just like anyone else—white or black. But it didn’t help. Because I knew there was still a difference, and I was on the bottom end of it.

“What are we going to do when we get there?” asked Katie as we rode. “We can’t just go in and say we were following that man.”

“First we have to find out if he’s just coming here to ask about black babies like everywhere else,” I said. “If so, then I reckon the McSimmons haven’t got anything to do with him and then we ought to go up to him and tell him about Emma. But we have to find that out first.”

“What will we say when we get there?”

“I thought we would just pretend to be paying Josepha a visit,” I said.

“But what if they do something to you, Mayme?” Katie said in a worried tone.

“What can they do? I’m not their slave anymore, remember?”

“I know … but I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

As we rode into the plantation and toward the big house, there was a lot more activity than the last time I was there. People and men and animals and wagons were all moving about. It reminded me of how it used to be, though I didn’t see too many coloreds around.

We stopped and tied up our horses in front of the house. A few people looked at us, but no one said anything. I could tell Katie was nervous. I whispered to her that she didn’t need to be, since no one knew her. But I guess I was nervous too. Having a secret, I suppose, always makes you nervous.

I led her around to the back of the house to the kitchen door, where I figured to find Josepha. I didn’t see any sign of the man we’d been following.

The door was a little way open. I peeked in. Josepha stood with her back to me on the other side of the room. I walked in and Katie followed.

“Hello, Josepha!” I said, walking up to her.

Startled, she turned around. But when she saw me, the look on her face was completely different than the last time when she had been so happy to see me. I could see anxiety in her eyes.

“Mayme,