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in arm, Papa and I strolled past the courthouse and the bank, the newspaper office and the busy slave market. We bought fried pies from a pastry shop on the waterfront. Papa wiped a smudge of sugar from my nose and told me I was a lucky girl indeed to be living in the very heart of the Lowcountry.
Now everything has changed. I wonder whether I shall ever again feel so lucky.
    Charlotte set aside her pencil. Perhaps she’d disembark in Georgetown and post her article for Mr. Sawyer’s newspaper from there. The sooner she could start earning money, the better.
    Standing on tiptoe, she peered out the small window. The ship’s master strolled the deck smoking his pipe, watching a scrim of high clouds forming on the horizon. In the next cabin two women laughed. The ship’s bell tolled the hour. Charlotte stepped out of her dress and draped it over the edge of the narrow bed. There was no basin for washing up, only a small pitcher of lukewarm water and a single tin cup. She unpinned her hair, dabbed at her face with her handkerchief, and crawled into the narrow bunk.
    Despite her trepidation at what she would find upriver, she was filled with something like hope. Tomorrow—for better or worse—she would be home.

 
     
     
    Two

    F rom Georgetown, the Resolute steamed northward along the winding path of the Waccamaw, past cypress swamps, brown marshlands, and stands of magnolia, pine, and oak. Standing on the deck, Charlotte watched a flotilla of wood ducks bobbing near the bank and a pair of cooters sunning themselves on a sun-warmed log. Overhead an osprey traced lazy circles in the azure sky. She shaded her eyes and followed the bird’s swooping movements, hoping to spot its nest. But the steamer changed course, following a sharp bend in the river, and she lost sight of the osprey as they approached Calais, the first of several plantations belonging to Papa’s friend William Alston. Next came Strawberry Hill, Friendfield, and Marietta.
    Charlotte peered through the stands of cypress, hoping to catch a glimpse of the houses she had often visited as a girl. As the steamer continued past Bellefield and Prospect Hill, she spotted roofs, chimneys, and an occasional outbuilding still standing and felt slightly more hopeful. If her neighbors’ homes had survived the Yankees’ predations, perhaps her own had too.

    A young woman wearing a brown cotton frock and a feathered leghorn hat came to stand beside Charlotte at the rail. She couldn’t have been much older than sixteen, but she had a vibrancy about her that seemed to shimmer in the humid air. Certainly she was the kind of girl men noticed. She nodded to Charlotte and waved one dainty hand toward the ruins of a white house visible through the newly leafed trees. “It makes me heartsick to look at it. Remember how beautiful it used to be?”
    Charlotte nodded.
    “Are you going home?” The young girl fished an apple from her bag and polished it on her sleeve, her eyes bright with curiosity, and took a dainty bite.
    “If there’s anything left of it. I haven’t been back since the war ended.”
    The girl stopped chewing. “Mercy. Who has been taking care of it all this time?”
    “A couple of men who belonged to my father looked after it for a time after the war. But they left sometime last fall, just as my father’s health worsened. He was too ill to travel, and I had no one to look after him, so I couldn’t go.”
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked so many questions. I’m Josie Clifton. My family owns Oakwood Hall.”
    “How do you do? I’m Charlotte Fraser. Fairhaven.”
    “Oh, I do hope you find your house in good repair. Ours is barely standing, but my father says we must occupy it to keep it out of the hands of the Negroes and the Yankees. He says the Yankees are looking for any excuse to declare the property abandoned and hand it over to the Negroes. Our friend Mr. Kirk is heading back to his place in the pinelands, and supposedly his niece,