THREE
A sleepless night left Maddie exhausted, her eyes sore from crying. She wiped her nose on the pillowcase, too tired to fetch a handkerchief, and heard the cocks crowing. The view from the bedroom window was shrouded in the pre-dawn darkness, enveloped in a layer of mist that obscured the outlines of her world. None of that would remain, as the trees would grow and the shrubs would change their shapes over the course of six years. On tiptoes, she made a tour of her bedroom, tabulating what she had to leave behind. Without waking Afi, she opened her trunk and looked at the contents.
All useful, all practical, nothing of great importance. Maddie removed some wool petticoats and replaced them with the beloved porcelain dolls that her mother had brought from Paris. Impossible to leave behind the rice basket that Afi’s husband had woven. Two dresses had to join the petticoats on the floor. There were books that she loved, and so a few sets of underdrawers would stay in Charleston in their stead. She would not abandon the shells from the beach, the feathers she had gathered with her mother under the paroquette nest. Satisfied that she had restored her treasures, she crept out of the house through the window in the morning room and tucked the worthless clothes under the shrubbery.
She should have made a run for it instead of worrying about the contents of her trunk. It was too late, with the sun up and the servants milling about the grounds, each one on the alert for an attempted escape. She could have slipped past Afi in the middle of the night, assuming that Ethan was not standing guard, which he probably was. Maddie resented her brother, both of her brothers, for their treachery and lack of loyalty. How was exile any way to show how much they loved her?
Maddie crept back to the morning room, to sit one last time on the settee where she had often sat with her mother, listening to marvelous stories about long-ago, about soldiers and sailors and spies. In her imagination, she could feel her mother next to her, holding her close, kissing her head. Fresh tears flowed. The Admiral wanted to be sweet to her, like a real father, but he had taken Mama away and she would not forgive him, ever.
To avoid him, she spent the morning glued to her grandmother’s side. She refused to eat a bite at dinner, especially the food that Mr. Ashford put on her plate. The meal ended, and it was like watching some other girl get up from the table, walk down the path through the garden, and pick up a particularly bright piece of oyster shell. It was her, but it was not her, stepping into the Admiral’s launch after being suffocated by embraces from her weeping relations. The boat lurched as the oarsmen shoved off, and Maddie woke from her dream. She sobbed as if she wanted to die on the spot. She closed her eyes and imagined her mother’s embrace but the comfort she once found was not there. She screamed, she begged for rescue, but her grandfather remained stony-faced and unmoving.
“You’ll be back before you know it, baby girl,” Ethan said, waving his handkerchief. “We’ll be right here waiting for you.”
“Pull hard, my boys, or we’ll miss the tide,” the Admiral said. The distance between Maddie and Riverside expanded, until she was too far from the bank to jump.
“Learn from the English ladies, but don’t ever forget that you are an American girl,” Grandfather Mahon shouted.
The oars splashed in the Ashley, casting a few drops onto Maddie’s dress. She wailed, inconsolable, her body turned around so that she could keep her grandparents in sight for as long as possible. The oars cut through the water. Maddie’s heart beat faster and faster, until she felt like it would beat right up her throat and be spewed into the river.
The Admiral took her hand, the skin coarse as if every inch of him was weathered. On the pier, the faces grew smaller and smaller, indistinct through the blur of tears. “I kissed your mother in the garden at Riverside, when she was but seventeen years old,” Mr. Ashford said. “It has not changed in all the years since. Do not be afraid, my sweet. One day you will come back, as I did, and find that to be true.”
Maddie was facing completely around, her body leaning to starboard so that she could see around the coxswain. Smaller and smaller, the images shrank, and then the boat rounded a bend in the Ashley. They were gone.