Chapter Six #2
The boards had been left near the back wall.
Peterson examined them in silence, crouching slowly beside the stack.
He used his left hand first, running his palm along the edge, then braced one board with his boot and tested the straightness.
When he reached for the second board, his right hand came out of his coat.
Only for a moment.
Only enough for two scarred fingers and the shortened stubs beside them to steady the wood.
Lottie saw the hand.
So did Delly.
Peterson must have felt the looking because the hand disappeared almost at once.
Lottie wanted to tell him she had not flinched. Wanted to say the hand did not frighten her, or trouble her, or make her pity him.
It would only prove she had noticed in the first place, and perhaps noticing was the one thing he was trying hardest to survive. So, she looked at the boards.
“That one has a bow,” she said, pointing to the piece he had just rejected.
Peterson glanced up.
“So it does.”
“Will it matter?”
“For a shelf? Aye.”
“Because of the weight?”
“And damp.” He took up another board. “Books are heavier than folks think.”
“I have always thought so.”
“You brought three trunks. I believe you.”
The dryness in his voice made her smile.
This time, he saw it.
For one small second, he did not look away.
Warmth moved between them, quiet and quick, so light another person might have missed it. Lottie did not. She would have recognized kindness from him anywhere now, even dressed as grumbling.
Then Delly cleared her throat. Lottie turned.
Her sister was watching them over the ledger with the grave expression of a woman observing dangerous weather develop over a town where she owned property.
“We are working,” Lottie said.
“I said nothing.”
“You nearly said several things.”
“They remained unsaid. I deserve credit.”
Peterson’s mouth twitched.
Delly noticed that too, of course. Delly noticed everything.
Cornelia came to the rescue by handing Peterson the brackets and asking whether the screws were sufficient.
He answered her with more words than Lottie had yet heard him spend in one stretch, explaining why the shelf ought not sit directly against the damp wall and why a small gap would preserve both wood and books.
He did not sound uncertain. He sounded capable. Patient. Precise.
When Cornelia asked whether the upper shelf should be higher, he shook his head.
“Children need reaching room. Women too.”
The words came out plain and practical. Then his ears colored as if he had remembered Lottie was both a woman and shorter than the proposed shelf.
Delly dipped her head over the ledger. Lottie loved her fiercely for not smiling.
“I appreciate reaching room,” Lottie said.
Peterson took up the hammer. “Most folks do.”
The shelf took the better part of an hour.
It should not have been romantic. It involved nails, planks, sawdust, and a great deal of Delly insisting the shelf ought to be level enough that a book did not slide gradually into ruin.
Cornelia held one end of the measuring string.
Lottie fetched screws, handed tools, and tried not to watch Peterson’s hands too closely.
She failed several times.
His right hand was not useless.
That was the first thing she noticed once he stopped hiding every bit of it.
It was stiff, yes. Scarred. Two fingers shortened.
The skin across the back pulled pale and tight in places, and his grip had to adjust around what was missing.
He used his left hand for strength and the right for balance, pressure, the brief work of holding something in place.
He knew exactly what the hand could do and exactly what it could not. What hurt Lottie was not the damage. It was the apology built into every movement, as if he expected the room to be offended by what winter had left him.
When he reached for a nail and found the tin had been moved, she slid it closer before he could search.
“Thank you,” he said without looking up.
“You are welcome.”
A simple exchange.
A nail tin and two ordinary words.
Her heart behaved as if he had recited poetry.
By the time the shelf was fixed to the wall, half the town seemed to have developed reasons to pass the meeting hall door.
Mrs. Beck stopped in twice. Mrs. Hanford declared the shelf plain but respectable.
Mr. Prentiss looked disappointed to find no disaster requiring his opinion.
A boy carrying a parcel stood long enough to ask whether books about horses would be allowed.
“All books are allowed,” Lottie said.
Delly looked up sharply. “Not all books.”
Lottie amended, “All suitable books.”
“That is better.”
Peterson looked at the empty shelf. “You’ll fill it before supper.”
“I hope so.”
He turned toward the tables. “Then choose what goes first.”
The invitation was so unexpected Lottie only stared at him.
“What?” he asked.
“You think I should choose?”
“It’s your library.”
The words were blunt. Almost careless.
They struck deeper than they should have.
No one corrected him. Not Cornelia. Not Delly. Not Mrs. Schulte, who had slipped into the doorway and opened her mouth as if ready to organize the moment, then closed it again.
Your library.
Lottie looked at the newly fastened shelf, at the books waiting in careful stacks, at the man who had come for nails and stayed to build the first place where her hope could stand.
She chose the Bible first.
Not because the church required it or the Bees would approve, though both were true. She chose it because if the shelf was to begin anything, it ought to begin with the Word that had steadied people long before Wild Rose Ridge had a name.
Then she placed the child’s primer beside it.
“Because little ones should not have to reach far for beginnings,” she said.
Peterson’s gaze moved to her face.
She pretended not to notice and chose the botany volume next.
“For what grows here.”
Cornelia nodded.
Then The Moonstone, because a library needed at least one mystery to keep it from becoming too respectable. Dickens came next. Shakespeare followed, though Delly insisted he be set far enough from the edge that no unsuspecting child could pull him down by accident.
At last, only the Tennyson remained in Lottie’s hands.
Peterson had stepped back by then. His hat was in his left hand again. His right hand had vanished into his coat. He had done his part and was already preparing to leave before gratitude could catch him.
Lottie turned the slim volume once in her hands.
Then she held it out.
Not toward his hidden hand. Only between them, with room for him to choose.
“I saved this one,” she said.
The room seemed to go on breathing around them, though Lottie heard little of it. Delly’s pencil stilled, and Cornelia turned discreetly toward the shelf. Mrs. Schulte, by some miracle of self-command, said nothing at all.
Peterson looked at the book.
“No need.”
“I know.”
“I said I get by.”
“I remember.”
His jaw tightened. “Then why?”
“Because you looked at it as if it was not a stranger.”
His gaze rose to hers. There was the guardedness. The warning. The old hurt standing close behind both. Beneath it was something else, something quieter and more tender than his fear.
Want.
He wanted the book.
Perhaps he hated that she could see it.
Perhaps he was grateful.
Perhaps both could sit inside a man at once and make him look as tired as Peterson did just then.
“It is Mr. Tennyson,” she said, keeping her voice light enough not to shame him. “He can be melancholy, but he is not poor company. If you dislike him, you may return him and tell me so plainly. I have survived criticism before.”
His mouth moved. “From your sister?”
“From Delly, Mrs. Whitmore, two grocers, one milliner, and a child who told me my bonnet looked like a pudding.”
“A pudding.”
“It had unfortunate gathering.”
This time, the almost-smile became a real one.
Small, crooked, and gone quickly, but real.
Lottie held very still around the joy of it.
Peterson reached for the book with his left hand.
His fingers closed carefully over the cover, brushing the edge of her glove before he could prevent it. The touch was slight. Hardly anything. Kid leather against work-roughened skin.
Still, Lottie felt it all the way up her arm.
He felt it too.
She knew because he stopped.
Only for a breath, but he stopped with the book between them with his fingers resting where hers had just been. His eyes lifted. Whatever he saw in her face made him swallow.
Delly made a small sound from the ledger table.
Cornelia turned a page that did not need turning.
Peterson took the book fully and stepped back.
“What’s the borrowing rule?” he asked, rougher than before.
Lottie gathered herself with difficulty. “One week to begin.”
Delly recovered faster. “Name, title, date borrowed, expected date of return.”
Peterson walked to the ledger.
He took the pencil in his left hand and bent it over the page.