Lillian lifted her chin and forced her voice out, low but present. “I… need… the book.”
Kline’s eyes flicked from her face to Isaiah’s. “Colonel Whitcomb will—”
“He already did,” Isaiah cut in. “Now either you open that ledger, Reverend, or you spend the rest of your life preaching about mercy while you ignore a sin sitting on your own shelf.”
Kline flinched, but the flinch wasn’t fear. It was shame.
He stepped back and opened the door wider.
Inside, the church smelled of old wood and candle wax and hymns that had been sung by people praying for deliverance while men like Whitcomb counted money.
Kline led them to the back room, where the record books sat in a chest like sleeping beasts.
His hands trembled as he lifted the lid.
“What year?” he asked.
Isaiah named it.
Kline flipped pages, the paper whispering under his fingers. He stopped, eyes narrowing.
Then his face went pale.
He turned the book so Lillian could see.
There it was.
Her name.
Her mother’s name.
And next to it, in a notation so small it had likely been meant to be missed:
“Born of Rosetta, enslaved. Condition of child disputed.”
Kline swallowed.
Isaiah’s voice was quiet, but it hit like a hammer. “What does ‘disputed’ mean, Reverend?”
Kline’s eyes lifted. He looked at Lillian, and something softened there.
“It means… someone argued she wasn’t property,” Kline said. “It means someone said she was… entitled to freedom.”
Lillian’s breath caught. Her voice came out in a thin, shaking thread. “Who?”
Kline hesitated, then pointed to a faint signature in the margin.
A name Isaiah hadn’t expected.
Rosetta.
Lillian stared at it like the ink might move.
Isaiah felt his chest tighten. His mother, Rosetta, had signed a document in a world that tried to erase her literacy, her personhood, her very right to leave a mark.
Kline’s voice dropped. “Colonel Whitcomb’s wife demanded it be sealed,” he whispered. “She said the child would ‘ruin the family.’”
Isaiah’s jaw clenched.
Lillian’s hands curled into fists.
Then footsteps sounded outside the church, heavy and quick.
All three of them stiffened.
Isaiah shoved the ledger back into the chest. Kline snapped the lid shut.
The doorknob rattled.
A voice hissed through the crack: “Reverend! Open up!”
