Part I — Arrival and Calculation

…….

One late night, when the household was set in sleep and the moon had thrown glass across the study windows, she passed by Thomas Belmont’s door. The door was ajar, not locked—an invitation born of thoughtless habit. Curiosity moved her feet. She stood in the dim light and read. The ledger was not poetry. It was neat columns of names and numbers, the language of industry and control. Lines recorded lashes and rations. Names she recognized: Little Samuel, punished for visiting his wife before she’d been sold; Rachel, lashed for falling ill in the field; numbers that sounded like the beating out of any human dignity.

She had intended to glance, to close the book and move on. But the numbers drew her in like teeth. Fifteen lashes for “stopping work.” Twenty for “insubordination.” The ledger ached with a kind of boredom that made cruelty efficient. There was no reason given; cruelty was administered as routine. She read until her eyes blurred. She read until the infant in the next room fussed and she had to attend, and even as she smoothed the cradle and hushed him, a seed took root. Not for the first time she felt the animating heat of a thought that had nothing to do with survival: the thought that the men who wrote the numbers could be reached, not by running or by pleading—those were fragile hopes—but by something intimate, something they mistook for softness.

Delilah had not come to Belmont to plan murder. She had come to provide and survive. But the ledger sketched a map she could read with the kind of patience she had learned in the marshes. She pocketed the thought and let it lie, like a seed beneath winter. She returned to her duties the next morning with the same quiet competence that had been praised by Dr. Whitfield and that served to fortify her cover. She smiled politely and placed the child at the breast. She sat in the nursery through the days, breastfeeding, cleaning, rocking, humming the small folk tunes her grandmother had taught her—songs that hid instructions in their syllables, reminders of roots and seasons.

Her experiments began small and private. On permitted walks she was allowed to gather herbs by the shallow creek at the western boundary—the same creek that supplied water to the kitchen and where the overseer hardly noticed a single woman stooping to collect wild mint. She brought back leaves and dried them in the sunlight of her window. She boiled them in a little tin, testing, tasting, learning how subtle the bitter could be, how some plants left no smell and yet settled in the body like a rumor. She watched the skin of her milk, tasted it when she felt the need to be sure; the infant tolerated it easily. Babies were strong in a different way. Their small, quick systems seemed to make room for things adults could not; they digested and discarded with a cruelty that was mercy. But adults—those who smelled of tobacco and coffee, those who kissed their children on the forehead and breathed in the tiny sweet scent—did not handle things that way. The mother’s touch, the father’s hand on a blanket—these were ways the world entered them slowly.

Delilah measured everything. She marked the days on a scrap of paper she kept folded in her bodice—weeks, quantities, the way a leaf was chewed, whether a tea was brewed strong or weak. She watched Thomas Belmont’s attendance in the nursery: mid-afternoons, when he would bring his ledgers, set the cradle near his desk, and let the child’s breath keep time while he wrote. She watched how he kissed the infant’s head as if fate were a commodity to be weighed. She watched the routine and learned the rhythm: the touchpoints where his skin met the residue of milk, the cloths he handled, the very breath he took while watching his son sleep.

Months passed. The baby grew plump and bright-eyed on the milk Delilah supplied. Dr. Whitfield came as he had promised, smiling and praising the child’s weight, the nurse’s sanitary practices. “Excellent stewardship,” he told Thomas over beef and port. “A fine environment for the child.” They all said words of gratitude. They recommended her to friends. And Delilah, who had been a girl of the marshlands taught to coax remedies from mud and leaf, fed her quiet plan the way one feeds embers—slow, steady, close to the chest.

At first it was anger that drove her, a white-hot flare. Then, when she discovered she could influence the body in ways the white doctors could not detect, anger cooled into a deeper and more terrible patience. She would not be theatrical. She would not unleash blood and fire. The plantation would not know the cause. Men would die the way the gambling tables and a hard winter might kill them: little by little, then all at once. She imagined the ledger, emptied of its neat cruelty. She imagined a ledger that had to account for absence in a new way.

When Thomas Belmont first complained of a headache—an ordinary man’s excuse for some other failing—she stood in the nursery and rocked Charles, feeling nothing the household would recognize as malice. When his hands began to tremble she offered a cup of tea and a meal. When his doctor told him to rest, to take wine and to sleep, she sat behind the curtain and counted the minutes. She adjusted nothing at first but the sway of her own face, the practiced softness that made suspicion impossible.

And then, on a night when cicadas hushed and the house slept like an animal on folded paws, she added a single new leaf to her evening mixture—no grand action, only a grain. When days later Thomas Belmont’s complaints became a regular feature of his speech—headaches in the mornings, complaints of indigestion—she recorded them like a scientist writes in a field journal: date, symptom, weather. The plan, she knew, had to be methodical. It had to be unremarkable. It had to allow the world its assumptions. People would always prefer to believe in the blindness of nature rather than the cunning of a servant.

On the morning she closed the ledger that would later be read by others with tears and confusion, Delilah stood in the hallway, the infant’s breath steady against her chest. She felt the strange, cold place in her chest where resolve and grief met. She was not blind to the moral hazard of what she contemplated—the way violence multiplies, the way the dead do not answer for what they leave behind. But she had seen the ledger. She had seen the small, scheduled torments that kept a plantation in motion, and where law and custom had failed, she planned to act.

When Thomas Belmont died, it would not be dramatic. It would be a decline small enough to attribute to the strain of running a plantation, to the weather, to whatever the physicians of the day could name without looking too closely. When news traveled and Evelyn wrote an effusive letter of recommendation, when Dr. Whitfield claimed he could not fathom the cause, Delilah would place that letter in the pocket of her dress and write her own ledger in the margins of her life—one entry at a time.

She rocked the baby until his breathing matched the hush of the house, and when he drifted to sleep she closed her eyes and allowed herself a single, steady breath. The plan had begun.

PART II — The Pattern Begins

Delilah left Belmont Plantation three weeks after Master Thomas Belmont’s funeral. Evelyn pressed an envelope into her hand—one more glowing letter of reference, written with gratitude from a grieving widow who believed luck, not poison, had stolen her husband. Delilah bowed her head and murmured softly:

“Thank you, ma’am. May the Lord keep your household.”

Evelyn clasped Delilah’s hands with trembling fingers.
“You were a blessing to my child. I hope you know that.”

Delilah offered a faint smile. “Children bring their own blessings.”

She walked away with the infant’s last sleepy coo still clinging to her heart. And yet, as the carriage rolled down the dusty road, she whispered under her breath—not prayer, not regret, just a truth carved from bone:

“One ledger closed.”

Riverside Plantation — 1843

Riverside was smaller, but cruelty didn’t need acres to flourish.

Master Daniel Haworth was a man whose discipline was recursive, predictable—almost mathematical. Every Monday morning, without fail, three enslaved people were whipped. Not because they had done anything wrong—but because he believed fear needed routine.

On Delilah’s second Monday, she heard the crack of leather from her room in the main house. Margaret, the newborn she nursed, stiffened against her. Another cry—a grown man’s voice. Another. And another.

Delilah hummed a lullaby softly.
“Don’t listen, little one. The world is louder than you need to know.”

Later that afternoon, Caroline Haworth found her in the nursery.
“Is Margaret feeding well?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Caroline hesitated, then sat in a creaking chair.
“Daniel says order is everything. Discipline keeps the workers… in line.”
Her voice faltered. “I don’t enjoy those mornings.”

Delilah kept her eyes lowered. “It is not my place to speak on the master’s ways.”

“No, of course not,” Caroline said quickly. But something about Delilah’s tone—a softness that sounded almost like sympathy—made the woman stay. “You must think me fragile.”

Delilah looked up.
“I think you are human, ma’am.”

That startled Caroline more than any sermon.

Daniel Haworth died in November 1844, collapsing onto his own ledger books. His last recorded entry listed three names for the next Monday’s punishments.

He never lived long enough to carry them out.

Dr. Whitfield examined the body and declared, “Apoplexy.” His hands shook slightly as he closed Haworth’s eyelids. “These things come suddenly.”

Caroline wept—a long, broken sound—and Delilah stood behind her, hands folded, grief feigned with terrible precision.

Inside, she whispered to that cold chamber within her heart:

“Two.”

PART III — A Trail of Quiet Deaths

From 1845 to 1848, Delilah passed through households like wind through a ruptured field. She nursed children. She soothed mothers. She earned praise.

She killed.

But each time, the piece of herself she lost grew larger.

Fairview Estate — 1846

Master William Crawford was a man who measured worth by how quickly a person obeyed. He spoke to Delilah only twice:

First:
“Keep the house quiet. Children need order.”

Second:
“Don’t ever look me in the eye.”

Both times, Delilah bowed. “Yes, sir.”

Months passed. Crawford grew pale, then sallow, then weak. He blamed the heat. He blamed work. He blamed God.

He never blamed the quiet woman whose milk-scent clung to his infant daughter’s blankets.

On the night he collapsed, Delilah whispered something unexpected beside his unconscious form:

“I do not hate you. But I cannot forgive the world that made us.”

Oak Grove — 1847

Samuel Patterson was not cruel. Not gentle either. Just… resigned. He treated his enslaved laborers with distant indifference, as though their suffering were a natural resource he had no power to alter.

The first time he saw Delilah nursing his son, he said:
“I’m glad someone in this house has tenderness. My wife is too frail, and I… am not made for it.”

Delilah nodded but stayed silent.

When he died—looking confused, frightened, reaching for breath that wouldn’t come—she felt something hollow in her chest. No triumph. No release.

Only necessity.

Pine Hill — 1848

Edward Morrison was the kind of man who smiled during sermons about compassion while his overseer beat people behind the barn. He quoted scripture while signing papers that sold families apart.

One night, Morrison saw Delilah comforting his child after a nightmare.
“You have a gift,” he said warmly. “You could have been anything if you’d been born different.”

Delilah looked up at him slowly.
“I was born different, sir. Just not in the way you mean.”

He chuckled, not understanding.

He died four months later.

When Delilah walked away from Pine Hill, she carried not satisfaction—but a growing ache. A slow, pressing question she tucked away:

How many must fall before I stop?

She had no answer.

PART IV — The Monster of the Ashley River

George Whitfield was different.

Different in the way storms are different from rain.

His plantation was infamous. Chains heavier than necessary. Punishments designed to break spirits, not bodies alone. Delilah heard whispers even before she arrived.

“No one lasts long in Whitfield’s house,” an elderly enslaved woman warned her at the river crossing. “He don’t just beat. He enjoys it.”

Delilah nodded once.
“So do storms enjoy tearing down trees? Or is it just what they do?”

The woman stared. “Child… you be careful.”

Whitfield’s Household — 1848

Whitfield greeted her with a look that lingered too long.

“So you’re the nurse. Heard good things.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “I like obedient women. It keeps life simpler.”

Delilah lowered her gaze. “Yes, sir.”

His wife, Abigail Whitfield, was a trembling creature who apologized for everything, even the weather. Their newborn daughter cried constantly, as if sensing the tension that cracked through the house like ice.

Delilah grew skilled at quieting the child. She sang songs older than the land beneath them. She moved with patient precision. She never raised her voice.

And all the while Whitfield watched her with predatory curiosity.

A Scene of Cruelty

One afternoon, Delilah carried the baby past the shed and heard Whitfield’s voice:

“Hold still, boy.”

A scream. A wet thud. Another scream.

She didn’t mean to look—but she did. Whitfield stood over a young enslaved boy, no older than twelve, who cowered in the dirt. Whitfield raised the whip again.

Delilah stepped forward without thinking.
“Sir.”

The whip paused mid-air.
“What?”

“Your daughter is asleep. The noise will wake her.”

Whitfield blinked as if that were the only reason to lower his arm. He sniffed once, threw the whip aside, and stormed away.

The boy trembled on the ground.
Delilah whispered, “Go. Quickly.”

That night, she brewed a stronger tea. Her hands did not tremble as she drank it.

Whitfield’s death came eleven months later.

He collapsed over his punishment records. Fitting, Delilah thought grimly, that the numbers themselves got the last glance at him.

At his funeral, his wife sobbed uncontrollably. Planters whispered condolences.
Delilah stood in the back, the infant on her hip, her face a mask of respect.

Inside, something wordless and dark uncoiled:

“Eight. And this one I do not regret.”

PART V — The Doctor Begins to See

Dr. Marcus Prescott was not extraordinary. But he was observant in ways most men weren’t.

The moment he examined George Whitfield’s body, something felt… off.

He whispered to the attending physician,
“See this discoloration at the fingertips? That pattern’s familiar.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know yet.”

But he would.

He began collecting notes—private ones. Death records. Ages. Timing. A peculiar pattern in symptoms most doctors dismissed as coincidence.

Then came the death of Franklin Hayes.

Then Jonathan Pritchard.

Prescott stared at his growing list, tapping the names.

“Three households… all with infants… all with wet nurses.”

He looked closer.

One name appeared repeatedly.

“Delilah… Morris.”

He traced the line of her references—Belmont, Haworth, Thornton, Crawford, Patterson, Morrison, Whitfield, Hayes, Pritchard…

Ten households.

Ten dead masters.

He whispered:

“What in God’s name have we overlooked?”

PART VI — The Last Child

Jonathan Pritchard was not cruel. Not good, either. Just a man molded by a system that lifted him above others and taught him not to question it.

His wife, Sarah, adored Delilah from the first week.
“You calm the baby better than I can,” she said tearfully. “I don’t know how you manage.”

“I have had practice,” Delilah replied softly.

Pritchard treated Delilah with polite distance. He asked after the baby’s health. He thanked her once, awkwardly, when she soothed the infant’s fever.

For the first time in years, Delilah felt a shadow of hesitation.

One night, while rocking the baby, she whispered:
“You are not a monster. But you belong to a world built by them.”

When she administered the first trace of toxin, her hands stilled midway.

She whispered:
“Let this be the last. After this… I vanish.”

But fate rarely obeys intentions.

Pritchard died in April 1851.

His wife collapsed over his chest, sobbing.
Delilah stood back, guilt curling inside her like smoke.

That night, packing her few belongings, she whispered:

“No more.”

She left Somerville with her last reference letter and a resolve to disappear forever.

PART VII — The Hunt

Two weeks later, Dr. Prescott arrived at the Pritchard home.

He questioned Sarah politely about the wet nurse.

“She was a blessing,” Sarah said, wiping her eyes. “If only Jonathan could have stayed longer to see how our son grows…”

Prescott leaned forward.
“Did she ever gather herbs? Or brew teas?”

“Yes. Many wet nurses do.” Sarah paused. “She used to collect plants from the creek. Said they helped her milk.”

Prescott’s breath caught.

“Which plants?”

Sarah frowned. “Snake root, I think. And something purple… pokeweed?”

Prescott stood.
“Mrs. Pritchard, I need to send men to find her.”

“Find her? Why?”

He hesitated.
“I’m not certain. But your husband’s death does not match what we’ve seen before.”

Sarah stared, horror slowly dawning.

“You’re saying…?”

“I’m saying I suspect something no one has ever considered.”

PART VIII — Vanishing

By the time the warrant was issued, Delilah was already in North Carolina.

By the time investigators reached the port, she was in Virginia.

By the time the first sketch of her description circulated, she was already on a wagon bound for Philadelphia under the name Laya Adams.

She found work in a textile factory. Long hours. Cold hands. Blistered feet. But no overseers. No ledgers of punishment. No infants whose milk would kill their fathers.

Every morning, she washed her hands until the sweet scent of breast milk faded forever.

Every night, she whispered into the darkness:

“I am finished.”

But memories didn’t leave. They clung like shadows.

Sometimes she dreamed of the babies—seventeen of them—tiny mouths suckling, eyes trusting. They had lived. Thrived. Some would grow into men. Some into women. Some into lives she would never see.

And she dreamed of the men she killed.

She didn’t fear them.

She feared the part of herself that had learned to be so patient, so precise, so calm.

PART IX — The Final Ledger

In Charleston, the Medical Society completed its private report.

Thirteen men dead.

Thirteen households touched by a quiet weapon no one suspected.

The committee chair whispered:
“If this gets out… no planter will trust his household again.”

“So what do we do?” Prescott asked.

“Seal it. Share only with those who must know. And pray she is never found.”

Prescott stared at the signatures on the report, feeling the weight of history shift beneath his feet.

“Do you think she’s still killing?” another doctor asked tremulously.

Prescott shook his head slowly.
“No. I think she was doing something deliberate. And deliberate things… end.”

PART X — The Human Question (Ending)

Philadelphia, Winter 1854.

Snow drifted across the streets. Delilah—now Laya—wrapped her shawl tighter and walked home from the textile mill. Her shoulders were tired. Her fingers stung from cold.

She paused at the corner where children played, throwing handfuls of snow at one another. Their laughter rose like a balm.

A boy bumped into her, nearly falling.
“Sorry, ma’am!”

“It’s all right,” she said softly.

He stared at her with bright, unknowing eyes.

“Do you got kids, ma’am?”

Delilah froze.

“I… tended to many,” she said at last.

He grinned. “Bet you were real good at it.”

She watched him run back to the others—a small, warm spark in the winter air. A spark that eased something long imprisoned inside her.

She walked on.

That night, sitting by her small window overlooking the quiet street, she took out her last scrap of paper.

She wrote three words:

No more ledgers.

Then she folded it once, slid it into the seam of her shawl, and let the candle burn low.

Outside, the world went on—unaware of the woman who had changed nothing and yet, in her own terrible way, had tried to take something back from a world that left her no choices.

Delilah Morris—Laya Adams—drew one long breath.

And for the first time in years, she allowed herself to imagine a future measured not in deaths, but in days.

Not in vengeance, but in survival.

Not in poison, but in possibility.

The end.