Sarah Amelia Whitmore screamed in the master bedroom. Mrs. Eleanor Price, the midwife, delivered the first baby. Then the second.
But when the third was born, silence cut through the room like a knife. The baby’s skin was visibly darker than his brothers’. Amelia, her green eyes wide with panic, hissed through clenched teeth, “Get that out of here. Now.”
Ruth Carter, a forty-year-old maid woman with scarred hands and eyes worn by years of suffering, was rushed in from the kitchen.
The midwife placed a bloodstained bundle into her arms. “Take him far away and never come back with him,” Amelia ordered, her voice shaking but resolute.
Ruth looked down at the sleeping infant. She understood immediately. His brown skin would raise questions Colonel Henry Whitmore could never be allowed to ask.
Under the pale moonlight, Ruth crossed the coffee yard, the baby wrapped tightly in her shawl. Her bare feet sank into the red earth. She knew obedience would haunt her forever, but defiance meant death.