Chapter Six
The Wild Rose Ridge library began in the meeting hall with three trunks, one broom, two borrowed tables, and Mrs. Hanford declaring poetry required supervision. If Delly were there, she would argue the romance section needed more supervision to not cause harm while writing in her notebook.
Lottie considered this a very promising start.
The meeting hall had been swept twice already, though dust still hid in the corners as if determined to preserve frontier standards.
Benches were pushed against the walls. The morning light came through the tall windows in pale squares across the plank floor.
One table had been placed near the front for sorting, and another by the door for what Delly had already begun calling circulation, even though nothing had yet circulated anywhere except Mrs. Beck’s opinions.
Lottie stood in the middle of it all with her hands on her hips and her heart full enough to ache.
Books lay everywhere.
Shakespeare in a careful stack near the window.
Several books from Charles Dickens sat beside two worn primers.
A row of household guides and practical manuals waiting for Cornelia.
The heavy botany volume sat open on the table, its engravings of leaves and blossoms as neat and lovely as prayer.
Tennyson lay beside it, still bearing the faint mark from the dock.
It was not much of a library.
It was the most beautiful thing Lottie had ever seen.
Cornelia Montgomery came in carrying a tin of nails, a measuring string, and the expression of a woman who had already fought one battle before breakfast and won by patience.
“Good,” she said, taking in the room. “You have begun without waiting to be told.”
“I hoped that was allowed.”
“In libraries? It is practically required.” Cornelia set the nails on the sorting table.
“I have spoken with Mr. Stafford. He believes he can give us two proper shelves by the end of the week, if he is not interrupted by chairs, doors, wagons, or husbands who believe repair requests become urgent only after being ignored all winter.”
“Two shelves,” Lottie said reverently.
“It will feel grand for nearly a day. Then you will need six.”
“I already need six.”
Cornelia laughed. “Then you are a proper librarian.”
A proper librarian.
Lottie looked down quickly, pretending to straighten the stack of primers.
No one had ever called her proper anything before.
Not in a way that meant capable. In Chicago, she had been useful, young, pleasant, and fortunate to have employment.
Delly had made certain she was safe, fed, and sheltered.
Mrs. Whitmore had called her my dear girl and blessed child.
Proper librarian landed differently.
It felt like being trusted with the shape of her own life.
Delly arrived half an hour later with a ledger tucked under one arm, pencils in her reticule, and the look of a married woman who had slept poorly, thought deeply, and found both experiences inefficient.
Lottie took one look at her sister and forgot the books.
“Oh,” she said.
Delly stopped just inside the door. “Oh what?”
“You look married.”
“I look no such thing.”
“You do.”
“I am wearing the same dress I wore yesterday.”
“Yes, but now you look as if you have argued with a stove and lost.”
Cornelia coughed into her hand.
Delly’s cheeks colored. “The stove in Mr. Simms’s cabin is contrary.”
“You rearranged his shelves, didn’t you?”
“That is entirely beside the point.”
“You did.”
Delly crossed the room and set the ledger on the table with unnecessary firmness. “His medical supplies were not arranged by any civilized principle. Catgut sutures near the washbasin, quinine behind lamp oil, laudanum without clear markings. A person could perish from the sheer disorder of it.”
Lottie smiled. “Did Mr. Simms appreciate being rescued from his own shelves?”
Delly opened the ledger. “He was not ungrateful.”
Cornelia’s brows lifted. “That is nearly a sonnet from Odelia.”
“It is a factual summary,” Delly said.
Lottie pressed her lips together, but the smile escaped anyway. There was something different in her sister. Not softer exactly. Delly would object to that word on principle. Some tightly fastened part of her had loosened just enough to let light show through.
Lottie thought of Jeb standing at the altar, his hands trembling when he took Delly’s. She hoped her sister had noticed. She suspected her sister had noticed and was pretending not to have done so.
Delly drew the ledger toward her. “Now. No book leaves this room without a name, title, date, and expected return. If the borrower cannot write, someone will write for him. If a page returns torn, stained, chewed, damp, burned, or smelling of tobacco, there will be consequences.”
“Chewed?” Cornelia asked.
“Children,” Delly said.
Cornelia nodded. “Fair.”
“And dogs,” Lottie added.
Delly looked pained. “I had not considered dogs.”
“That is why there are two of us.”
For a moment, Delly looked at her across the table with something so fond and startled that Lottie’s throat tightened. Then her sister sniffed and drew the first column in the ledger.
“We shall begin with order,” Delly said.
“We shall begin with welcome,” Lottie corrected.
Delly’s pencil paused. “Both, then.”
That was a gift so large Lottie did not tease her for it.
They worked through the morning. Cornelia sorted by usefulness first and category second.
Delly created columns, rules, and a borrowing system strict enough to protect the books from every hazard except the Busy Bees.
Lottie unpacked each volume with a care that felt almost like introduction.
“This is Mr. Shakespeare,” she told a wary young logger who had only come in to deliver a plank and now appeared trapped by politeness. “He is not as frightening as he looks, unless someone assigns him to you in school.”
The logger backed toward the door. “I’m not much for plays, miss.”
“Then perhaps not Shakespeare. What do you like?”
He blinked. “Like?”
“Yes.”
“Fishing.”
Lottie brightened and turned to a small stack of practical books. “Then try this one. It has a chapter on river fish. You needn’t read the whole thing. Books are not offended when a man visits only the useful parts.”
The logger looked as if this were a new and merciful doctrine.
Delly leaned in. “Name?”
“Olsen.”
“Full name.”
“Peter Olsen.”
Delly wrote it down.
Mr. Olsen accepted the book in both hands, as if it might either improve his life or explode, and left quickly.
Lottie watched him go, warm with triumph.
“The first loan,” Cornelia said softly.
“Not counting the Tennyson,” Lottie said.
Delly glanced at the book lying near the botany volume. “That one has not been loaned.”
“Not yet.”
Delly followed her gaze. “You are waiting for Peterson.”
Lottie busied herself with a stack of household guides. “I am holding it in reserve.”
“For Mr. Peterson.” It wasn’t a question.
“For a reader who may appreciate it.”
“You know very little about his reading habits.”
“I know he picked it up carefully.”
“A man may be careful with a thing without wanting it.”
Lottie looked at her sister then.
Delly’s face shifted. She had heard what she said. Perhaps she had heard Mr. Simms somewhere underneath it. Perhaps not.
Cornelia stepped neatly into the space before either sister could bruise the other by accident. “Peterson does read.”
Delly turned. “Well?”
Cornelia’s mouth curved. “That was not a full report, Mrs. Simms. It was merely a fact.”
“Facts should travel with context.”
“Not always. Sometimes a fact is waiting for its proper owner.”
Lottie looked at Cornelia gratefully. Delly looked dissatisfied but did not argue. The door opened, bringing with it the smell of sawdust, lake wind, and warm pine.
Mr. Peterson stood on the threshold.
Lottie’s heart rose so quickly she nearly dropped the book in her hands.
He had come.
Not in Sunday clothes, and not with a brown-paper bundle as he had yesterday.
He wore a work shirt with sleeves buttoned at the wrist, his hat low in his left hand, and his right hand tucked close against him.
His boots were dusty, and a faint line of sweat darkened his collar from the walk down from camp.
He looked once at the room.
Books covered nearly every available surface.
His mouth tightened.
“Mr. Peterson,” Cornelia said cheerfully, as though he had not already begun reconsidering every choice that had brought him here. “You are just in time.”
“For what?”
“To save civilization.”
He looked toward the door behind him.
Lottie bit the inside of her cheek.
“We need the starter shelf set against that wall,” Cornelia continued, pointing to the north side of the hall. “The one you warned would swell in damp weather. Mr. Stafford sent word the brackets you brought yesterday should hold until the proper work can be finished.”
Peterson looked at the wall, then at the brackets, then at Lottie.
“I only came for the nail box.”
Delly, who had been writing in the ledger, looked up. “The nail box is under the table.”
Peterson’s gaze shifted to her.
Delly blinked once, as if realizing she had accidentally provided information that might have helped him leave.
Lottie stepped forward. “You may take the nails, of course.”
His expression eased a fraction at the permission.
“If you happened to have an opinion about the shelf before you go, we would receive it with gratitude.”
“And restraint,” Cornelia added.
Delly made a sound that suggested restraint was rarely useful in carpentry.
Peterson looked at the wall again.
A battle took place behind his beard. Lottie could almost see the order of it. Refusal first. Then obligation. Then the sort of care he seemed to resent in himself because it kept dragging him toward other people’s needs.
At last, he set his hat on the end of the table.
“Show me the boards.”
Lottie did not smile.
She deserved credit for that.