He glanced at Ellen at the sickly posture and bandaged arm at William following behind. His eyes lingered for a moment on William’s face, and…
Where I had chosen hatred and revenge, he had chosen love and forgiveness. I continued reading, turning pages almost frantically as though I was starving,…
The station loomed ahead, its platform lit by gas lamps that cast long shadows across the tracks. Only a handful of passengers waited for the…
This was why their former enslavers never stopped hunting them. This was why slave catchers came to Boston armed with federal warrants. Ellen and William…
I ran through the bewildered city, a ghost in the storm, following an internal compass that pointed me away from the palace, away from my…
The same society that had created her would refuse to recognize her, blinded by its own assumptions about who could occupy which spaces. But assumptions…
Ellen produced the paper with her left hand, the right still cradled in its sling. The officer examined it, then looked back at her face,…
And when that happened, there would be no helpful stranger to intervene. No convenient excuse to offer. Just Ellen alone, facing someone who might actually…
The sick young gentleman was now part of the scenery, too pathetic to be interesting. But in the rear car, William was facing a different…
When I finally closed the book, the world had changed. Or rather, I had changed in it. The silence in the room was no longer…


