I learned early that on a Mississippi plantation, truth was a candle in a hurricane. You could cup your hands around it, pray it wouldn’t die, and still watch it go out because a powerful man decided darkness suited him better.
My name was Elijah Carter, though the ledger called me boy as if the word could shrink my bones, as if ink had the authority to erase a person. I belonged to the Cross estate outside Natchez, a wide, proud stretch of cotton that smelled like heat, sweat, and money that didn’t belong to the hands that earned it.
I was a house servant. That meant clean floors, polished silver, quiet footsteps, and a face trained into stillness. It meant being close enough to hear the master’s secrets, and far enough to die for noticing them.
That morning, the sun pressed down like a palm over the whole world. I wiped sweat from my brow and pretended it burned me worse than it did, because the overseer liked to believe he controlled even the weather.
