CHAPTER 32: ABEL’S SECOND MESSENGER
A reply from Louisiana reached Samuel Reed a week before the threatened meeting at the ferry.
The letter came through a minister who had carried messages for Abel during the original dispute.
Abel was alive and still working near Oakwood, but he had moved the notebook away from the plantation.
He feared that the new estate manager intended to reclaim it as company property.
The manager argued that the names represented business records rather than personal memories.
Abel refused to accept the distinction.
The notebook contained marriages, births, separations, and the names of children whose parents had disappeared into distant sales.
He had copied those details after his regular labor ended, often by candlelight.
The letter said that the threatening note probably came from a former assistant to Mercer.
The man had been dismissed when the trust investigation revealed irregular payments.
He now claimed that anyone who possessed copied pages owed him a share of the money recovered from the estate.
Samuel read the report aloud while Josiah and Ruth sat across his desk.
“He may not have the authority he claims,” Samuel said.
“But he knows enough names to frighten people.”
Ruth asked whether the notebook could be placed somewhere beyond the manager’s control.
Samuel suggested a church collection maintained by several trustees rather than a single keeper.
Josiah worried that placing the records publicly might expose people who had trusted Abel.
They spent the afternoon discussing how to preserve names without revealing routes used to help people leave the plantation.
Ruth insisted that the copied lists should distinguish family relationships from the dates and places of secret departures.
The relationships deserved preservation.
The travel arrangements could endanger people who still depended on them.
Samuel agreed to propose that separation in a letter to Abel.
Miriam added that any person named in the collection should have a chance to correct errors.
She had learned during her own search how one mistaken surname could send a letter into the wrong county.
Josiah wrote a careful reply, describing their reunion and the blue button without including the address of Miriam’s house.
He wanted Abel to know the search had succeeded.
He also wanted to protect the people whose names still appeared in the disputed records.
When the letter was sealed, Ruth asked whether they had done enough.
Josiah told her he did not know.
They had no way to control every action in Louisiana.
They could only refuse the invitation to panic and make each next decision with the information they possessed.
