“And to produce Negroes,” Tom accused.
Jeff winced. “Do you want to leave your wife and children with nothing for their survival but the charity of my grandfather? Is that what you want?”
Tom stumbled to his feet as if ready to beat my boy, and my daughters let out terrified cries. “Gentlemen,” our guest interrupted, white-faced with anger, and with an authority few men but my father possessed. “It’s unseasonably warm in here,” William said with calculation, like the diplomat he’d once been. “I’ll escort the ladies outside where the cool mountain air may calm and soothe.”
It ought to have shamed them. Both of them. If a quarrel was inevitable, it ought to be taken outside. Instead, my children and I were forced to flee our tables while the argument raged on. And somehow, I found myself on the winding flower walk in the glow of the setting sun, staring at showy scarlet plumes of cockscomb and golden marigolds, fighting back the tears that burned behind my eyes.
Ann, my beautiful eldest daughter whom I sometimes despaired of ever seeing again, had planted those flowers. And now the rest of my family was splintering apart, with my oldest and dearest friend as a witness.
“How much is the debt?” William asked.
I couldn’t tell him. Not even as furious with Tom as I was. It would’ve been a disloyalty. “It doesn’t matter. It’s no excuse for what you were forced to witness. I apologize—”
“Don’t you apologize,” William broke in, with a sharp edge of anger. “Mr. Randolph is shockingly disrespectful to you. I cannot imagine your father would countenance it.”
“He wouldn’t. He doesn’t,” I insisted, trying to find the words to explain. “It’s simply that Tom feels abandoned. As I recall, you were once just as angry with me and for the same reason.”
William must’ve known that Marie reported back his long-ago furious renunciation of our love. He couldn’t deny it. Instead, he asked, “Is it true that your son intends to use his father’s property as a slave breeding farm?”
I swallowed, shaking my head. I might’ve lied to him, as we lied to visitors and to ourselves all the time. We pretended that our slaves were treated like family. That they were never abused. That whips were wielded justly. That violence—true violence—was not done to them at our whim. I had deceived myself about this for years. But it wasn’t in me to deceive him. “I don’t know what Jeff intends in that regard.”
It was a mortifying admission, one that revealed the ugliness beneath the glow of all the pretty flowers. An admission far uglier than I’d allowed myself to accept before. William paused beside spires of lavender and pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture that filled me with overwhelming shame.
No one else could’ve made me feel shame for it. I’d never, could never, condemn the men in my life who relied upon slavery, especially when my lion of a father believed himself impotent against the evil and my idealistic husband had been politically ruined for his efforts to stop it. But I was now standing beside the man who had offered me a different reality, a different life, from which I had turned away. And I felt some shame and regret for that, too.
ON THE ELEVENTH OF SEPTEMBER, in her best dress, Virginia made her bridal procession—not at her father’s home of Edgehill, but at Monticello. And awaiting her upon the grass-green floor of the entry hall was her happy groom, Mr. Trist.
My new son-in-law beamed with joy as he spoke his vows, and we all sighed happily when my sweet Virginia spoke hers. Everyone but Tom, that is. He stood stiffly at my side, as if he were merely a guest and not the father of the bride. He delegated all those responsibilities to her grandfather, saying that he didn’t wish to ruin the wedding with his malaise. I think he recognized in himself the malignant spirit that had broken free and meant only to shield Ginny from it.
But our poor daughter kept searching out her sullen father’s eyes in the crowd, pleading a smile from him. And it seemed to take all the strength Tom had just to lift the corners of his mouth. He didn’t laugh or mingle in conversation. He didn’t dance. And he didn’t offer toasts—though he drank deeply whenever they were offered. So, for the bride’s sake, I tried to be happy enough for both of us.
It wasn’t difficult. For nearly six years, Mr. Trist had been con stant in his attachment to Ginny. They’d resisted all our attempts to discourage their love until we were simply forced to acquiesce to its power. Theirs was not a marriage for money or advantage, but born of long friendship, shared troubles, and a true meeting of hearts. They might live poor as church mice all their lives, but their romance was perfectly obvious to everyone. And when the bride and groom pledged themselves to one another, their voices trembling with emotion, it wasn’t Tom who gazed at me with wistful remembrance of our wedding day.