The transformation didn’t happen overnight, but it began with a bowl of venison stew. At the dinner table, Temperance hesitated, waiting for Obadiah to eat first, as she had always been forced to wait for her mother and sister to finish.
“In this home,” Obadiah told her firmly, setting a full bowl before her, “you will never eat last again.”
That first night, she slept in a large, soft bed—Obadiah insisted the main room was hers—and cried herself to sleep, not from sorrow, but from the overwhelming relief of being treated like a human being.
The Curriculum of Freedom
Obadiah Stone had a plan, and it wasn’t to keep Temperance dependent on him.
“You are not here as a servant,” he told her a few days later. “I am going to teach you everything I wish someone had taught my daughter.”
