Angels Watching Over Me (Shenandoah Sisters Book #1) Read Online Free Page B

again floated up into her hearing.
    ‘‘The slaves know what to do,’’ he was saying. ‘‘They just need someone to push them, to crack the whip every day or two. Tell Mathias what to do. He’s a good man. He’ll keep the darkies in line and take care of the crops.’’
    ‘‘How will I know what to tell him?’’
    ‘‘Just tell him to get the cotton planted and then keep it weeded. And Leroy knows more about animals than any darkie alive. Just tell them to run things for a while—we’ll be back by fall.’’
    ‘‘What about the grain?’’
    ‘‘Let the wheat turn golden, then give it another week before the scythe is put to it. The color’s the key—green’s got to be gone and the head gold. But if you see rain coming, get it in even if it hasn’t been a week. Once it’s gold, you’ve got to get the wheat under the roof before the rains come, else it’ll fall and rot on the ground. But Mathias knows all that. He and Leroy know what to do. Just make sure it’s gold.’’
    Their voices grew soft.
    ‘‘. . . what about . . . and if my brother . . .’’
    Her mother’s voice drifted and she couldn’t hear the rest. Now her father spoke again.
    ‘‘. . . hasn’t come around in all this time . . .’’
    ‘‘. . . but if he comes around again . . . his gold . . . what if he . . .’’
    ‘‘. . . not going to show up with a war on . . . give it to him like you always said . . . but probably back in California . . . for all we know.’’
    ‘‘. . . hate to think . . . if Templeton found out . . . you not here . . .’’
    ‘‘. . . couldn’t possibly . . . unless . . . your family . . .’’
    ‘‘. . . been too long . . . my family . . .’’
    ‘‘. . . sister might know where . . .’’
    ‘‘. . . got it out of Ward . . . hate each other too much . . . Ward would never give him . . .’’
    ‘‘. . . always ran with a rough bunch . . . tell him . . . haven’t seen him in years . . .’’
    ‘‘. . . what should I . . .’’
    ‘‘. . . just keep . . . down where . . .’’
    Again her father’s and mother’s voices became so distant that Katie could make out no more of their conversation. She crept back into her bed. But she couldn’t go to sleep. She lay for a long time confused and afraid.
    What did her mother’s two brothers have to do with whether the wheat was ripe and golden? She’d never even seen either of them, though she’d heard her parents talk about them before. She knew her father didn’t like either of them.
    Talk of war, talk of her father and brothers leaving— it all frightened her.
    But gradually she fell asleep and dreamed of golden fields of wheat, of golden coins, and the light golden hair of her doll Rebecca. . . .
    Only a few days later Katie’s father and three older brothers rode away from Rosewood, leaving the plantation in the hands of Katie’s mother and the slaves. The conflict forever known as the War Between the States had arrived . . . and life in North Carolina would never be the same again.

W AR C OMES
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    K ATIE KNEW HER FATHER OWNED SLAVES, but like most young white children—and I suppose black ones like me too—she took it all as part of the natural order of things. She’d never thought about it, never questioned it, never stopped to wonder whether it was right or wrong. She had no idea what the conflict between North and South was all about.
    The fighting broke out on April 12 of 1861 when Confederate soldiers attacked Fort Sumter in the Charleston harbor. The Union commander of the fort surrendered two days later. The war had begun.
    In July the Union army was routed at Manassas in Virginia. It looked like the prediction of Katie’s father might come true, that the South would defeat the North in plenty of time for them to get home for the harvest.
    But when Katie and her mother next saw Richard Clairborne a few weeks later, he didn’t have the joy of victory on his face. He had come home to tell them that