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incredulity. “Why ever not?”
    “Have you not heard?” Mrs. Davis’s skinny frame fairly vibrated with eagerness. “No, I suppose you haven’t. South Carolina seceded from the Union four days ago! It was in the evening paper. Did no one tell you?”
    Shock tore through Flanna, numbing her toes and tingling her fingers. Unable to respond, she looked back at Charity, then shook her head as confused thoughts whirled in her brain. It couldn’t be true! Oh, Wesley had written about a group of politicians who had threatened to secede if Lincoln won the presidential election, but she had never dreamed they’d actually proceed with their plan.
    Aghast, Flanna glanced about the room until her eyes fell on a folded newspaper. “May I?”
    “Of course, you certainly should take it.” Mrs. Davis’s age-spotted hand quivered as she lifted it in permission. “Read what your countrymen have done. And know that if trouble arises between you and Roger Haynes, the fault can be assigned to those hotheaded slaveholders in South Carolina!”
    With the older woman’s tirade ringing in her ears, Flanna scooped up the newspaper and tucked it under her arm as she fled for the safety of the stairs.

    Flanna thought her heart must have stopped when Mrs. Davis told her that South Carolina had seceded, for it now began pounding much faster than usual, as though to make up for a few lost beats. By the time she and Charity reached her room it was knocking in her chest like a swampland woodpecker.
    Her dark eyes wide with alarm, Charity laid the mantle on her bed and searched Flanna’s face. “Miss Flanna, what’s wrong with South Carolina?”
    “I’m not sure,” Flanna whispered, half-stumbling to her own bed. She fell on the creaking mattress, mindless of her dress and the medical books strewn there. With trembling fingers, she shook open the newspaper and read the screaming headline: “South Carolina Secedes!”
    “It can’t be.”
    “What can’t be?” Charity had a round, cheerful face whose natural expression was a smile, but that face was blank now, all traces of humor wiped away.
    “South Carolina,” Flanna murmured, thinking of her father, her brother, her aunt, and her cousins. “My state—
our
state—has seceded from the Union.”
    “Seceded?” Charity knelt at Flanna’s feet to unlace her walking boots, but she paused and looked up. “Miss Flanna, I don’t understand.”
    “Pulled away, withdrawn,” Flanna whispered, reading the article. “South Carolina and Charleston are no longer a part of the United States.”
    Charity responded with a strange gasping sound, but Flanna scarcely heard her, so intent was she upon her reading. According to the newspaper article, calls for secession had been circulating ever since the news of Lincoln’s election reached Charleston on November seventh. The foreman of the grand jury in the federal court, Robert Gourdin, refused to conduct any further business “as the North, through the ballot box has swept away the last hope for the permanence of the Federal government of these sovereign States.” Within days other officials resigned, including Judge Andrew G. Magrath, the United States District Attorney, and the collector of the port.
    “Great heavens,” Flanna whispered, only half-feeling Charity’s tug on her boots, “they are quite serious! I never believed it would come to this!”
    Secessionist leaders, she read, were comparing themselves to the early American revolutionaries. Palmetto and Lone Star flags, the beloved emblems of South Carolina, were sprouting like wildflowers throughout the state. Many gentlemen of Charleston had decorated their lapels with cockades—gold badges with the palmetto tree, a lone star, and a coiled rattlesnake superimposed on a blue silk ribbon.
    “What are they going to do?” Charity’s brown eyes were wide and slightly wet when Flanna looked down at her. “Does the paper say?”
    “I’m afraid I don’t know,” Flanna