Page 77 of Just Imagine
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Katharine Louise
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
“SELF-RELIANCE”
15
Kit was alone in the great rumpled bed when the noise in the hallway awakened her. She blinked against the sunlight, then bolted upright as she realized where she was. The sudden movement made her wince.
Sophronia rushed in without bothering to knock. “Kit! Honey, are you all right? Magnus wouldn’t let me leave, or I’d have been here earlier.”
Kit couldn’t meet Sophronia’s eyes. “I’m fine.” She pushed back the covers. Her robe lay across the bottom of the bed. Cain must have put it there.
As she slipped into it, Sophronia stiffened. Kit saw her staring at the pale stain on the sheet. “You stayed with Magnus last night?” she said quickly, trying to divert her.
Sophronia pulled her gaze away from the bed and said unsteadily, “The major didn’t give me much choice. Magnus slept on the porch.”
“I see.” Kit headed into her own room, just as if everything were normal. “A nice night for sleeping outdoors.”
Sophronia followed her. Kit began to wash in the water Lucy had left for her. The silence hung heavy between them.
It was Sophronia who broke it. “Did he hurt you? You can tell me.”
“I’m fine,” Kit repeated, too quickly.
Sophronia sat down on the side of the bed that hadn’t been slept in. “I never told you this. I didn’t want to, but now . . .”
Kit turned away from the washstand. “What’s wrong?”
“I—I know what it’s like to be . . . to be hurt by a man.” She twisted her hands in her lap.
“Oh, Sophronia . . .”
“I was fourteen the first time. He—he was a white man. I wanted to die afterward, I felt so dirty. And all that summer he’d find me, no matter how hard I tried to hide. ‘Gal,’ he’d call out. ‘You. Come over here.’ ”
Kit’s eyes filled with tears. She rushed to her friend’s side and knelt beside her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t want you to.”
She drew Sophronia’s hand to her cheek. “Couldn’t you have gone to my father and told him what was happening?”
Sophronia’s nostrils flared, and she snatched her hand away. “He knew what was happening. White men always knew what was happening to the slave women they owned.”
Kit was glad she hadn’t eaten, because she would have vomited. She’d heard stories, but she’d always been able to convince herself that nothing like that could ever happen at Risen Glory.
“I’m not telling you this to make you cry.” Sophronia took her thumb to one of Kit’s tears.
Kit thought of the arguments about states’ rights she’d made over the years to anyone who said the war had been fought over slavery. Now she understood why those arguments had been so important to her. They’d kept her from confronting a truth she hadn’t been able to face. “It’s so evil. So wicked.”
Sophronia rose and moved away. “I’m doing my best to put it in the past. Right now, it’s you I’m worried about.”
Kit didn’t want to talk about herself. She returned to the washstand, acting as if the world were just the same as it had been the day before. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I saw the expression on his face when he carried you into this house. It doesn’t take much imagination to know you had a hard time of it. But listen to me, Kit. You can’t keep all that ugliness stopped up inside you. You have to let it out before it changes you.”
