The Last Ballad(111)

Richard stood as if uncertain of what to do, but then he opened the door just wide enough so that Ella could pass by him without the two of them touching. Ella raised her hand and gestured over her shoulder to where Sophia and Hampton stood.

“I’ve got friends with me,” she said.

“Show them in, Richard,” the woman at the top of the stairs said. “All of them.”

Richard opened the door a little wider. Ella turned and offered a weak smile. She went inside. Richard did not look at Sophia or Hampton, but he stood there with the door ajar. Sophia moved toward the house, walked up the porch steps. Hampton followed her. When they entered, they found Ella had already ascended the stairs toward the woman. Hampton assumed that the woman at the top of the stairs must be Kate, but he could not imagine how Ella could know and trust someone so wealthy, someone who lived so well. The hardwood floors gleamed under the foyer’s lights. A darkened hallway sat on one side of the staircase, leading to what Hampton assumed was the kitchen at the back of the house. To Hampton’s left was a large dining room. He’d glimpsed a grand chandelier hanging over a long dining table as he’d passed through the front door. Oil portraits and old photographs, what looked to be daguerreotypes, hung on the walls. On his right, just inside the door, was a sitting room.

Ella and Kate stood whispering at the top of the stairs. The man named Richard pulled his robe tight around him again, refusing—perhaps unable—to make eye contact with Sophia and Hampton.

“Richard,” Kate said. He looked up to where she stood on the floor above them. Ella was beside her. “Please offer our guests a seat, and then wake Claire and have her put on some coffee. There’s cake in the cupboard. Please cut it.” She turned away. Ella followed her. Hampton heard a door close.

Richard stared at the spot where the two women had been standing, then he lifted his hand and gestured toward the sitting room. Hampton followed Sophia inside. The room was dark, but he could see a long leather sofa and two sitting chairs. Richard turned on the light, and Sophia took a seat on the sofa. Hampton sat down beside her.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Richard said. He nodded, kept his eyes on the floor.

“Thank you,” Sophia said.

Richard nodded again and left the room. Hampton listened as he walked up the stairs. The house was quiet. Then he heard Richard knock gently on a door and say, “Claire.”

Hampton looked around the room. The two sitting chairs were on his right. Across the room, a low cabinet had been pulled away from the wall; one of its doors was open, revealing a stack of records. Hampton looked around the room, but he did not see a phonograph.

He’d almost forgotten that Sophia was sitting beside him, until he felt the warmth of her hand on top of his own. Her touch startled him. He looked at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what? There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“For asking you to come,” she said. “For convincing Weisbord to send you. It’s my fault.”

“No,” he said. “If Beal were a better organizer—”

“It’s my fault you came to Gastonia,” she said, “not Fred’s. But we’re safe here. No matter what happened tonight, we’re safe here.”

Whispered voices floated into the room from the stairwell. People descended the stairs as quietly as possible, turned at the bottom, followed the hallway to the kitchen. Voices, louder now, came from the back of the house, accompanied by the sounds of cabinets and drawers opening and closing. Sophia and Hampton sat, holding hands, listening to the sounds of the people in the kitchen. Soon there was the smell of coffee brewing.

A few minutes later, Katherine rounded the corner and stood in the entrance to the sitting room. Ella stood beside her.

“Good evening,” she said. “You must be Ms. Blevin.” She stepped forward and reached for Sophia’s hand. “And you must be Mr. Haywood.” Hampton stood and took her hand in his, found her handshake firm and formal. His mind could not help but marvel at the impossibility of him touching such an elegant white woman in such an elegant home in the Carolina of the Klan and Jim Crow.

“Please, make yourselves comfortable,” the woman said. Hampton returned to his seat on the long sofa. Ella walked around the coffee table and sat in the armchair closest to Hampton. “Ella, let me speak with my husband.”

“Thank you, Kate,” Ella said.

“Of course,” Kate said. “Of course.”

Kate turned and went down the hallway. Hampton heard her voice in the kitchen, followed by Richard’s voice, which seemed louder, perhaps angry.

“She’s going to help us,” Ella said. She looked at Hampton. “She’s going to get you on the next train.”

Someone was coming up the hallway toward the sitting room. The shape of a woman filled the door, and Hampton, remembering that Kate had told her husband to “wake Claire,” kept his eyes on the table before him. It was one thing to touch a married woman in her home; it was another to look her daughter in the face.

“There are milk and sugar here, if you’d like,” a voice said. It seemed to belong more to a woman than to a girl, and Hampton knew that whoever had spoken was close to his own age. A silver tray was lowered toward the table; it held a pot of coffee, three cups with spoons, a carafe of milk, and a small bowl of sugar.