Chapter Thirteen
No matter what she thought, Peterson was not avoiding her. Avoiding would have been easier to understand.
By noon, Lottie had heard his name from every direction except his own mouth. Mr. Olsen came into the meeting hall to find out how many shelves Lottie thought she would need to display all the books.
Mr. Stafford stopped by with a measuring string, a carpenter’s pencil behind his ear, and a question about whether a permanent library ought to have two front windows or three.
Luke appeared long enough to ask Cornelia whether the ground beside the schoolhouse stayed dry after the spring rains, then vanished again before Lottie could ask why he needed to know.
At dinner, she had pieced together enough to be dangerous. Peterson was not avoiding her. He was building something where she could not see him do it.
Lottie left the meeting hall with her bonnet ribbons untied, the lending ledger still open on the table, and Mrs. Schulte calling after her that library property should not be abandoned in a time of civic expansion.
“I am expanding civically,” Lottie called back, and kept walking.
The schoolhouse stood on the edge of town where the land lifted gently above the main road.
Beyond it, the pines gathered thick and dark, and below it, Wild Rose Ridge spread itself in a scatter of roofs, wagons, drying laundry, smoke, and summer dust. The white church showed through the trees to the left.
The meeting hall sat farther down the street, still wearing its bunting from yesterday.
Beside the schoolhouse was an open patch of ground Lottie had walked past a dozen times without seeing properly.
Today, it had stakes driven into the dirt.
Twine marked a long rectangle. A pile of stones sat near one corner. Two sawhorses stood in the shade of a fir tree. Several planks lay stacked nearby, and a carpenter’s square rested on top of them.
Peterson stood inside the marked-off shape with his hat low and his sleeves rolled to his forearms – both forearms, looking down at a paper in his left hand.
Lottie stopped at the edge of the lot. For one breath, she forgot to be indignant.
The rectangle was not large. It was only earth, string, stakes, and boards.
She saw it all at once as if walls had already risen: shelves along the sides, a table beneath the window, children sitting cross-legged near the stove, Delly’s ledger on a desk, Cornelia bringing over primers from the schoolhouse, Peterson standing near the door pretending not to be proud of it.
A library.
A real one.
Her throat tightened so quickly she had to swallow before speaking.
“You kissed me last night and started building my library this morning,” she said. “Do not ask me to believe both are committee business.”
Peterson looked up. He did not smile.
That was probably wise, because if he had, she might have forgiven him too quickly.
“This is not your library,” he said.
“Oh?” Disappointment clouded her thoughts.
“It belongs to the town.”
“How fortunate the town sent me to ask about it.”
His gaze moved past her toward the street. “Mrs. Schulte sent you?”
“No. Mrs. Schulte is still recovering from my departure.”
“Then you should go back.”
“No.”
He folded the paper once and tucked it into his vest pocket. “This ground needs measuring.”
“It appears measured.”
“It needs measuring twice.”
“I have heard that is a sensible practice.”
“It is.”
“I am not in the way of you measuring.”
“You are standing on the front step.”
Lottie looked down.
She was standing inside the twine rectangle, precisely where the door would be.
The realization moved through her like a small bell.
She did not step back, but the largest smile broke over her face. “So, I am.”
Peterson looked at her, and his jaw tightened as if the sight hurt him. That, more than anything, made her anger rise again.
“You should have told me,” she said.
“There was nothing to tell.”
“You are staking out a building.”
“Stafford is staking out a building. I am helping.”
“You gathered the men.”
“I asked questions.”
“You sent Olsen to ask about the number of shelves.”
“Would rather have too many instead of too few.”
“You sent Luke to ask about rain.”
“Drainage matters.”
“You are building me a library, Peterson.”
His eyes met hers then. “I am giving the town what it needs.”
“What do I need?”
He said nothing. The wind moved the twine near her skirt.
Somewhere behind the schoolhouse, a child laughed, then a woman called him back to the shore.
Life went on as if Charlotte Bellamy were not standing in the doorway of a dream with the man she loved trying to make himself small enough to disappear inside good works.
She stepped carefully over the twine and came closer.
“You keep doing this,” she said.
“Doing what?”
“Putting your care into lumber, lists, brackets, and field pages, then pretending I am foolish for knowing care when I see it.”
His gaze dropped to the marked ground. “Care is not a promise.”
“No, but it is something.”
He suddenly looked tired. Not from work, though he had likely done too much already. This was the kind of tired that came from holding a door shut against a storm and knowing the hinges were weakening.
“I should not have kissed you,” he said. Her heart gave one hard, foolish leap at the word.
Kiss.
At least, he wasn’t pretending it had not happened.
“I did not ask you to regret it aloud in a schoolyard.”
His mouth pressed tight. “You deserve better than a man who has no proper house, no clean trade, and no whole hand to offer.”
“There it is.”
He frowned. “There what is?”
“The list you keep instead of courage.”
His eyes sharpened. Lottie was close enough now to see sawdust on his sleeve and a nick along one knuckle where the wrapping had shifted. His right hand was uncovered today. It hung at his side, the fingers stiff from yesterday’s overuse.
The sight of it made her want to reach for him.
She did not.
Not yet.
“You have a trade,” she said. “You work harder than any man I have ever seen. I’ve never met anyone who knows timber, tracks, flowers, and books.
It was you who said we should make a shelf strong enough for children who lean.
Your hand caught me before I struck the boards.
As for a house, you are standing in the middle of one you began for me before you had courage enough to knock on my door. ”
“It is not for you.”
The words came too fast.
Lottie looked around the staked rectangle. “Then tell me why the front window faces the lake.”
He said nothing.
“Tell me why the doorway is set where the afternoon light will reach the lending desk.”
His gaze dropped.
“Tell me why Mr. Stafford asked me whether I wanted two windows or three when I never knew there was a building to decide.”
“Stafford talks too much.”
“Stafford talks exactly enough.”
Peterson turned away, but only a little. Not a retreat. More a man gathering himself before saying what he believed was necessary.
“You are mistaking kindness for something else.”
Lottie went still.
There was an accusation. Not spoken as harshly as it had been in the old version of this day, but no less painful for being quieter. Perhaps more painful because his voice shook around it.
“Kindness,” she repeated.
“You have a tender heart. You see hurt and want to mend it. That does you credit.”
“Do not compliment me while insulting me.”
His gaze returned to her.
She stepped over the measuring string stretched between them. “Say the word if you mean it.”
His jaw tightened. “Pity.”
The word struck exactly where he meant it to.
Lottie’s eyes burned. She hated that they did. She hated that he saw her upset.
She refused to step back.
“No,” she said.
“Lottie—”
“No. You do not get to take what I gave you last night, what you gave me back, and reduce it to pity because pity is easier for you to refuse.”
He looked away. She followed the movement, staying in front of him without crowding him.
“Pity would not make me angry,” she said. “Pity would not keep me awake half the night. Pity would not make me want to shake you and kiss you in equal measure.”
His eyes closed briefly.
When they opened, the hurt she saw nearly undid her.
“I am not a girl handing out charity because your hand was damaged,” she said, softer now. “I have never looked down on you. I could hardly manage it if I tried. You are too tall and too stubborn.”
A rough sound escaped him. It was not quite a laugh.
She took courage from it.
“I look up to you,” she said. “I have looked up since I first read the letters you sent. Since I first saw you on the dock, when you picked my book out of the puddle. A man who cannot bear to see a book ruined is not a man I pity.”
His throat worked once.
“I will not let you call my heart tender as if tenderness is the same as foolishness. I know the difference between a wounded thing in the road and a man who has been brave so long he has mistaken loneliness for strength.”
Peterson flinched.
It was enough.
Lottie gentled her voice because she had not come to conquer him. She told the truth.
“You may decide not to marry me if you choose,” she said. “Maybe your fear is safer than wanting. You may even build me an entire library and tell yourself giving me shelves is the same as giving me up. Do not lie to me about what this is.”
For a long moment, he said nothing.
The schoolyard held its breath around them: pines, dust, stakes, twine, boards, and the shape of a building not yet raised.
Then Peterson spoke.
“It is not pity.”
Lottie’s breath caught. He looked at her then, and the honesty in his face was almost more than she could bear.
“I know it is not,” he said. “That is the trouble.”
She wanted to go to him. She wanted to put her hands on his chest and tell him trouble was not always a warning. Sometimes it was the place where life could change.
Instead, she stayed where she was.
“What is the trouble?” she asked.
“You.”
The word landed between them with no ornament at all. Lottie’s heart turned over. Peterson seemed to regret it at once, but he did not take it back.