Page 48 of Charlotte

Lottie slipped her hand through Delly’s arm, the way she used to in Chicago when the street was icy and they had to share their balance.

“I can try.”

Delly looked toward the shelf Peterson had built. “Trying is not a plan.”

Across the room, Cornelia lifted the first lending book into place and smiled as if the Lord had answered a prayer she had nearly given up praying.

By dinnertime, three more books had been borrowed. At closing, Mrs. Beck had promised cookies for anyone who came to “inspect the literary progress.” Mrs. Hanford began drafting a rule about clean hands before touching the precious pages. Delly rewrote it in fewer words and with sterner consequences.

Lottie worked until her back ached and her fingers smudged with dust. Now and then, she looked at the empty place where Tennyson had been.

Not empty, she corrected herself. Open. There was a book out in Wild Rose Ridge now with Peterson’s name beside it in the ledger.

Only Peterson.

For now.

Lottie ran her thumb over the blank space after his surname and did not write what had not been given.

She could wait.

A library, after all, was built on faith that what left would one day return.

Chapter Seven

June 23, 1886 — The Meeting Hall and Camp Road

Lottie learned on Tuesday morning a library could attract three sorts of people:

Those who wanted books. Those who wanted to argue about books. Finally, there were those who wanted to see whether Peterson had truly borrowed poetry.

The first group was small but precious.

The second group was mostly Mrs. Hanford.

The third group arrived from the camps before noon and made themselves comfortable near the door with all the subtlety of boys peering through a bakery window.

Lottie noticed them at once.

Three loggers stood just inside the meeting hall, hats in hand, boots dusty from the camp road, trying very hard to appear uninterested in the shelves. One was Jack from the cookhouse, whom she already knew by voice and grin. Another was Peter Olsen, who had borrowed the fishing book and returned to say, with great seriousness, that page thirty-two had useful information and page forty was “mostly nonsense.” The third she did not know, though he had a reddish beard and the pleased look of a man hoping to witness entertainment.

Peterson was not with them.

Lottie told herself she had not looked for him the moment the door opened. Then she told herself other things equally unconvincing and returned to arranging the children’s books on the lowest shelf.

The first shelf had held through the night. She had checked it twice that morning. Not because she doubted Peterson’s work, but because it pleased her to touch the smooth edge of the plank and remember he had put it there. Bible, primer, botany, Shakespeare, Dickens, and The Moonstone stood in neat company. The empty space where Tennyson had been made her smile each time she saw it.

Not missing. Borrowed.

There was a difference.

Cornelia had gone back to the schoolhouse after helping with the early sorting. Delly had stopped by only long enough to inspect the ledger, straighten the salt-and-sand jar they were using to dry ink, and ask Lottie whether she had slept.

“I slept,” Lottie had said.

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the beginning of one.”