I rub my eyes and yawn. When I open them, he’s holding a ring between his fingers.

“Oh . . . Jesus.”

“I was going to do it at the restaurant but . . .” He grins. “Here is better.”

I touch the ring. It is cold and gorgeous. Three rubies are set on both sides of the diamond. I look up at him, feeling very hot all of a sudden. I pull my sweater off my shoulders. I am smiling and about to cry at the same time.

“I have to tell you something, Stuart,” I blurt out. “Do you promise you won’t tell anyone?”

He stares at me and laughs.“Hang on, did you say yes?”

“Yes, but . . .” I have to know something first. “Can I just have your word?”

He sighs, looks disappointed that I’m ruining his moment. “Sure, you have my word.”

I am in shock from his proposal but I do my best to explain. Looking into his eyes, I spread out the facts and what details I can safely share about the book and what I’ve been doing over the past year. I leave out everyone’s name and I pause at the implication of this, knowing it’s not good. Even though he is asking to be my husband, I don’t know him enough to trust him completely.

“This is what you’ve been writing about for the past twelve months? Not . . . Jesus Christ?”

“No, Stuart. Not . . . Jesus.”

When I tell him that Hilly found the Jim Crow laws in my satchel, his chin drops and I can see that I’ve confirmed something Hilly already told him about me—something he had the na?ve trust not to believe.

“The talk . . . in town. I told them they were dead wrong. But they were . . . right.”

When I tell him about the colored maids filing past me after the prayer meeting, I feel a swell of pride over what we’ve done. He looks down into his empty bourbon glass.

Then I tell him that the manuscript has been sent to New York. That if they decide to publish it, it would come out in, my guess is, eight months, maybe sooner. Right around the time, I think to myself, an engagement would turn into a wedding.

“It’s been written anonymously,” I say, “but with Hilly around, there’s still a good chance people will know it was me.”

But he’s not nodding his head or pushing my hair behind my ear and his grandmother’s ring is sitting on Mother’s velvet sofa like some ridiculous metaphor. We are both silent. His eyes don’t even meet mine. They stay a steady two inches to the right of my face.

After a minute, he says,“I just . . . I don’t understand why you would do this. Why do you even . . .care about this, Skeeter?”

I bristle, look down at the ring, so sharp and shiny.

“I didn’t . . . mean it like that,” he starts again. “What I mean is, things are fine around here. Why would you want to go stirring up trouble?”

I can tell, in his voice, he sincerely wants an answer from me. But how to explain it? He is a good man, Stuart. As much as I know that what I’ve done is right, I can still understand his confusion and doubt.

“I’m not making trouble, Stuart. The trouble is already here.”

But clearly, this isn’t the answer he is looking for. “I don’t know you.”