CHAPTER SEVEN C: THE MILL DOOR
The mill bell rang before Elias reached the workers’ quarters.
A line of people was already forming outside the meal shed, and the cook was counting portions with tired hands.
Elias searched the line for his mother and found only her neighbor, a woman named Lottie.
“She has gone to the mill,” Lottie whispered.
“Thomas sent for her before dawn.”
Elias felt his stomach tighten.
“Who delivered the order?”
“The younger stable hand.”
“Did he say why?”
“He said the master wanted to ask about Hannah.”
Elias turned toward the mill without taking his breakfast.
The path ran between two sheds where workers repaired tools beneath an awning.
Several men looked up as he passed, but nobody called out.
He reached the mill and found the outer door closed.
The latch had been repaired the previous week, and Elias knew it could be lifted from the outside with a simple turn of the iron ring.
He stopped when he heard his mother’s voice inside.
“I have answered that question for years,” she was saying.
Thomas replied with forced patience.
“You told me the girl was taken to another estate.”
“That is what your overseer told me.
”
“And you believed him?”
“I had no choice but to live with what he told me.”
Elias opened the door.
His mother sat on a bench beside the grain sacks.
Thomas stood opposite her with a clerk who held a pencil and a narrow notebook.
The clerk looked embarrassed to find Elias in the doorway.
“I did not send for you,” Thomas said.
“You sent for my mother,” Elias answered.
“She is old enough to speak for herself.”
“Then let her leave if she wishes,” Elias said.
Thomas looked toward the clerk.
“You see how insolence spreads when discipline is neglected.
”
His mother rose slowly.
“My son has asked one question,” she said.
“I would like to answer it.”
Thomas did not move.
She crossed the floor and stood beside Elias.
“I wish to leave,” she said.
The clerk lowered his pencil.
For a moment Elias thought Thomas might order them both seized.
Instead the master stepped aside with visible reluctance.
“This conversation is not finished,” he said.
Elias led his mother into the yard.
They walked in silence until the mill was hidden by the wagon shed.
“He knows about Hannah,” she said.
“He knows she may be alive,” Elias answered.
“He wanted to know where she was taken.”
“Did you tell him anything?”
“I told him I would recognize her face even if she had grown taller than me.”
His mother stopped beneath a chestnut tree.
“He asked whether I would bring her back if she were found,” she said.
Elias looked at her.
“What did you say?”
“I asked him whether he had ever waited beside a road for a child who never came home.”
“And what did he say?”
“He asked the clerk to write down that I was uncooperative.”
Elias felt a sharp, exhausted laugh rise in his throat.
His mother took his hand.
“You must not make your plans around his conscience,” she said.
“He may have one, but he has never needed to use it for us.”
“Martha has a wagon,” Elias replied.
His mother looked toward the distant orchard.
“Does the wagon have room for two?”
“I believe so.”
“Then we should speak of what we can carry.”
Elias watched her straighten the cuffs of her worn dress.
She had not asked him whether leaving was wise.
She had asked only what the journey would require.
They returned to the cabin by separate paths so nobody would see them planning together.
Elias went first and found that the door stood slightly open.
A small heap of clothes lay on the floor where someone had searched the chest.
He touched the empty place where his mother kept Hannah’s childhood blanket.
The blanket was gone.
