Chapter 1

The day my uncle got out of prison.

My father blocked my way and said, "Cordelia Henson, if you dare go meet that criminal, then don't ever call me your father again!"

I bit my lip and said nothing, took the fifty dollars I'd saved over three years, and turned and left.

I paid ten dollars to hire an ox cart and rode forty jolting miles to the prison gate on the edge of the city.

When my uncle saw that I'd come alone, he suddenly smiled. "Cordelia, your father didn't give you a hard time, did he?"

I gripped the few bills left in my pocket and shook my head.

Watching me fight back tears, he flicked my forehead gently. "My girl's grown up. You've learned to be strong."

Then he clapped his hands lightly.

A green jeep pulled up and stopped right in front of us.

I froze.

I was about to say something, but my uncle spoke first. "My girl, your uncle's name is cleared now... From now on, with me here, no one will ever bully you again. Come... come back to the village with me and set things right!"

1

The sky was barely light when I got up in the dark.

I grabbed the fifty dollars I'd saved over three years and hurried outside.

But I'd only reached the yard when the door of the main room creaked open.

My father stood there with his tobacco pipe, his face dark as a coming storm.

He said it slow, word by word. "Cordelia Henson, if you dare go meet that criminal, then don't ever call me your father again!"

I bit my lip and said nothing.

I knew it wasn't that he was ashamed of having a convict for a brother-in-law.

It was that he was afraid my uncle would come out and drag up the past, and expose the dirty thing he'd done back then.

My mother used to be an heiress in Los Angeles.

If she hadn't been sent down to the village, she never would have married my father.

But she had a hard labor giving birth to me, and she didn't make it.

Later.

My father looked down on my uncle's background, and on top of that he'd set his eye on that widow in the next village.

He threw together some evidence and turned it in, claiming my uncle had done wrong alongside my grandfather years ago, and just like that he had him sent away for eight years.

After that, my father got his wish and married the widow.

And the widow did her part, giving him a son.

From then on, I became the one person too many in this house.

The washing, the cooking, feeding the pigs, all of it was mine, and one extra bite of cornbread at a meal earned me a scolding that dragged on and on.

My father knew I still thought about my uncle.

But he never let me go see him. Even saying his name got me a beating.

Once I secretly brought some food to the prison to see my uncle, and he found out. He hung me from the roof beam and beat me for the better part of a morning.

Beat me so badly I couldn't get out of bed for a month.

Any other day, if my father talked like that, I'd have ducked my head and backed away.

But not today.

Today was the day my uncle got out.

He was the only family I had left in the whole world.

Even if it meant being thrown out of this house, I was going to go meet him!