A Free Heart Read Online Free

watched as Jane pulled their little wagon down the road that led out of the plantation. Sammy turned around and waved at me before they were out of sight, and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. My oldest brother, Sterling, came in and tried to explain it to me, but I was eight. Nothing he said made any sense to me. All I knew was that my soulmate was leaving.”
    Elizabeth handed Harriet a handkerchief. She took it and wiped her eyes, then laughed. “How many of these am I going to take from you today?”
    “We’ll just throw them in with the laundry. No harm done.” Elizabeth smiled gently. “And then what happened?”
    “Time passed. My father hired workers to come in and help run the plantation, and my brothers pitched in too—they were both married, and their wives helped my mother with the household duties. We weren’t as wealthy as we once were. Andrew, my other brother, explained to me that now that we had to pay our workers, we had less for ourselves. That was a shock to me. It had never occurred to me that our slaves weren’t paid. It sounds silly, I know, but I was so young, things like that had just never crossed my mind. The word ‘slave’ just meant the people who lived on the plantation. It wasn’t until years later when I was reading in the Old Testament about the Israelite slaves that I finally understood.”
    Harriet wiped her eyes again. “Let me skip forward to the happy part of my story. Last summer, I was out shopping. It was a gorgeous day and I was going along from store to store, looking in windows, probably wasting time more than actually shopping. I heard my name and looked up, and there was Sammy.”
    Elizabeth clasped her hands together under her chin, her eyes shining. “No!”
    “Yes. There he was, wearing a gray suit, as tall and handsome and distinguished as any of the other men on the street. Seeing him again was like every one of my dreams and daydreams had come true at once. He promised to meet me down by a stream that ran through the back of our property. I practically ran down there when the time came. We talked and talked for hours. He and his mother had come to Kansas after they left our place. She’d found a job working as a maid for a very wealthy family, and Sam was able to start working not too long after that. When I saw him, he was on a break from his studies—he was a student at Wilberforce University in Ohio.”
    “Oh, that’s wonderful,” Elizabeth said. “So much changed after the war.”
    “So many things changed for the better.” Harriet twisted her borrowed handkerchief between her fingers. “He said he came down to Atlanta to find me, and that running into me on the street was a stroke of destiny. He would have come out to the plantation, but there I was, right in front of him. He told me that when he left Georgia, he knew he’d be coming back for me someday. Even at eight years old, he wanted me to be his wife.”
    Elizabeth reached out and grasped Harriet’s hand. “And then what happened?”
    Harriet began to tremble. The memories were cruel sometimes. “He wanted to bring me back to Kansas with him. The laws in this state are much more tolerant and accepting than in most other states, and he wanted to see if it was possible for us to have a life together. I can’t even tell you how I felt when he said this. Seeing him again, all grown up and dashing and heroic, coming to find me, telling me he loved me . . . I would have gone anywhere with him at that moment. I was ready to go as I was, with just my hat and parasol. But he insisted that I actually go pack and have a few days to say my good-byes.” She chuckled from a painful spot in her chest. “The plan was that I would go with him to Salina, where I would live with his mother. Then he’d return to Ohio and finish his schooling. After that, we’d be married. I agreed—it sounded wonderful. And then he kissed me.”
    Harriet closed her eyes, remembering that moment, the tingles down her