Outside, silence reigned between us. The December wind rattled the windows. Somewhere in the house, Josiah waited to learn his fate.
Finally my father spoke, and what he said shocked me more than anything that had happened before. "I could sell him," my father said softly. "Send him to the Deep South. Make sure I never see him again."
My blood ran cold. "Father, please..."
"Let me finish." He raised a hand. "I could sell it. That would be the right solution. Separate you. Pretend it never happened. Find you somewhere else."
“Please don’t do that.”
“But I won’t.” A glimmer of hope flashed in my chest. “Father?”
“I won’t do it because I’ve watched you these past nine months. I’ve seen you smile more in nine months with Josiah than in the previous fourteen years. I’ve seen you become confident, capable, happy. And I’ve seen the way he looks at you, as if you were the most precious thing in the world.” He rubbed his face, suddenly looking ancient. “I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. It goes against everything I was raised to believe. But…” He paused. “But you’re right. I brought you together. I created this situation. Denying that you would form a genuine connection was naive.”
"So, what are you saying?"
"I'm saying I need time to think, to find a solution that won't leave you both unhappy or destroyed." He stood up. "But Elellanar, you have to understand. If this relationship continues, there's no place for it in Virginia, in the South, maybe anywhere. Are you ready to face that reality?"
“If it means being with Josiah, yes.”
He nodded slowly. "Then I'll find a way. I don't know what it is yet, but I'll find a way."
He left me in the library, my heart pounding, hope and fear clashing inside me. Josiah was called back an hour later. I told him what my father had said. He slumped into a chair, overwhelmed.
“He has no intention of selling me. He has no intention of selling you. He will help us.”
“How can we help you?”
"He said he would try to find a solution."
Josiah ran his hands through his hair and cried, deep, trembling sobs of relief and disbelief. I held him as tightly as I could from my wheelchair, and we clung to the fragile hope that maybe, somehow, my father could make the impossible possible.
But none of us could have predicted what would happen next. My father's decision two months later would change not only our lives, but history itself.
My father pondered for two months. Two months during which Josiah and I lived in anxious uncertainty, awaiting his decision. We continued with our routines—working at the forge, reading, talking—but everything seemed temporary, contingent on whatever solution my father had in mind.
At the end of February 1857, he called us both into his study.
