There was nothing for Clementine to say. Isabelle knew this, and was content to receive no response, only a look of understanding—the same, she was sure, that Clementine gave the men who paid her.
Isabelle faced her fully, pressed out the wrinkles of her dress with her free hand, and stood straight.
“Thank you for your time,” she said. “You were very accommodating.”
“If you need anything further,” Clementine said, her concern still apparent, “don’t be afraid to ask. I do feel for you. Being George’s wife—that’s not an easy obligation.”
She nodded and stepped back into her home.
Isabelle collected herself and tried to put on a smile for anyone familiar she might meet as she reentered traffic. After only a few paces, her mind ventured off. Not having eaten all day, she was ravenous. She might devour all the fruit in her basket and still have room for more upon returning home. She imagined the juices staining her dress, the sticky remains of the peach crusting her lips. Perhaps she’d return to the cabin like a heathen having fled the wild. The thought nearly made her laugh.
Near the square she stopped at Blossom’s Café. She’d never dined there but it felt like a perfectly worthwhile place to sit and ruminate. She leaned against the side of one of the barrels out front, put her basket down, and snatched a peach. She was halfway toward taking a bite when she caught sight of a few men inside the establishment, playing dominoes, sliding the pieces across the table, linking them to others. Her brother had a set as a child. There would be days when their father would be at work, their mother entertaining, and Silas and the other neighbor boys would be occupied by the tiles for hours. They did not play the actual game, but the child’s version—setting the pieces up in a row to fall. Her brother and his friends would line the dominoes up in as exotic a locale as possible: over books, under the bed. She would watch but was not allowed to play herself. Because she had never been included, she was left mostly to think of how little there was for her to do. Now, on this day, she pondered the opposite: not how little there was to do, but how much had been done—a trip to Selby, to Mildred’s, to Clementine’s—with so little accomplished. She was eating a peach. Watching men play dominoes. Thinking about how much life was like her brother’s games, each day a tile falling toward the next, leading to nothing but the end of the line.
A boy appeared from the shop, youthful, his hair so fair it was clear it would darken as he got older and it drew color from the world. He could’ve been her son. He told her she would need to buy something if she was going sit in front of the store. She was still eating her peach. She took another one from the basket and gave it to the boy without uttering a single word. He didn’t pretend to decline, and instead put it to his mouth immediately.
“Do you play?” she asked, and pointed at the dominoes inside.
“No, ma’am,” he said, his mouth full.
“Smart,” she said, picking up her basket. “That’s smart.”
She left then but did not go home. Instead, she turned back and found her way, after a moment’s hesitation, to Clementine’s house. This time she knocked rapidly.
When Clementine came to the door, Isabelle said, “There is something. A favor. I’m not beneath asking it of you.”
“Well, be quiet about it,” Clementine said. “My girl’s asleep.”
“You’re better with your words than I am. Far better. And the job I have in mind requires that skill.” Isabelle propped up her basket of fruit.
Clementine looked back inside, checking on her child.
“Let’s take a little walk,” she said. “And discuss whatever you’re on about.”
“It’s a good cause,” Isabelle said. “A worthy one. I promise you that.”
CHAPTER 20
The world was visible to Prentiss only as it passed him by. Through the front door down the hall from his cell he caught a glimpse of patches of light, a blurry stream of bodies, the clipped colors of clothes. He heard the booming and fading of voices. But not a single soul stopped in to visit the man who would soon be hanged.
There were other cells, all of them empty, as they had been since he’d arrived the day before. The only person who paid Prentiss any mind at all was Hackstedde himself, who sat at a desk, alternately throwing darts or rolling cigarettes, whistling and playing with his timepiece. He was, somehow, more restless than Prentiss, and after their first few hours together he could not help making conversation, which for Prentiss was far worse than the pain of silence. The sheriff seemed to believe that Prentiss was interested in his previous work as a patroller. He said he’d earned the nickname Bloodhound, though Prentiss could divine no reason for its bestowal, since not a single story ended with Hackstedde finding the slave he sought.