Chapter Fourteen
Lottie returned to the meeting hall with Cecil’s drawing folded against her heart and his name still warm in her mouth.
Cecil.
He had given it to her.
Not to the town. Not to the ledger. Not to the loggers who used Peterson because it was easier and safer and less likely to invite a laugh.
To her.
Only when we are alone, he had said.
For now.
She had meant to come back quietly. She had meant to sit at the lending table, copy the latest borrowing entries, and behave like a young woman capable of ordinary tasks after a man had handed her both a library drawing and the tenderest part of his name.
She made it three steps inside before Delly looked up from the ledger.
Her sister saw too much.
She always had.
Delly set down her pen. “You’ve been crying.”
“I have not.”
“You have.”
“I was walking in the wind.”
“There is no wind.”
“Then I was anticipating wind.”
Delly’s mouth tightened. “Lottie.”
That one word undid the last of Lottie’s composure.
She turned toward the shelf instead of her sister and pretended to straighten the primers. “I am well.”
“You are not.”
“I am better than I was.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Lottie closed her eyes.
Of course, Delly would notice. Of course, she would set down the pen, leave the ledger, and move straight toward Lottie like a woman carrying bandages into battle. Her sister did not know how to do otherwise. For five years, Delly had been provider, guardian, watchman, shield, and wall.
Lottie loved her for it.
She was also tired of being protected from her own life.
“It was Peterson,” Delly accused.
Lottie turned sharply. “Do not say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“As if his name explains the tears.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No.”
Delly’s eyes narrowed. “What did he do?”
“He’s building me a library.”
That stopped her sister. For one tiny, satisfying moment, Odelia Simms had nothing to say.
“He what?”
Lottie pulled the folded drawing from her bodice and laid it on the table. “Beside the schoolhouse. Stakes, twine, window placement, shelves along both walls. Mr. Stafford knows. Luke knows. Olsen knows. Apparently, the entire town knew before I did.”
Delly unfolded the paper.
Her gaze moved over the sketch with practiced speed: door, windows, stove, lending desk, shelves.
Then her eyes caught the lower corner.
C. Peterson.
Lottie saw the moment she noticed it.
Delly looked up. “C?”
“He gave me the name.”
Her sister’s expression grew careful. “He did?”
“Yes.”
“To use?”
“When we are alone.”
Delly folded the paper more slowly than she had opened it. “That matters.”
“I know it matters.”
“Lottie—”
“No.” The word came out too sharp. She lowered her voice, but not her chin. “Please do not begin with the warning.”
Delly drew back a little. “I haven’t warned you.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to ask whether he had also given you a promise.”
The question struck harder because it was fair. Lottie took the drawing back and held it against herself. “No.”
Delly’s eyes moved toward the paper. “Then he is giving you walls and withholding the door.”
The words were so like Delly—neat, exact, and unbearable. Lottie’s temper flashed.
“You have been saving that tone for him all week.”
“I have been trying to understand what is happening.”
“No, you have been trying to decide whether I am safe.”
Delly’s shoulders stiffened. Lottie knew that stiffness. It meant her sister was calling herself reasonable while preparing to become immovable.
“Not here,” Delly said.
“Why? Because someone might hear me sound less than grateful?”
“Because this is the library.”
“Libraries are places for truth.”
“They are not places for sisters to wound each other in front of the lending ledger.”
That was unfairly sensible.
Lottie hated when Delly was sensible while being infuriating.
She turned and walked out the side door.
Delly followed.
Neither of them spoke as they crossed the small stretch of yard behind the meeting hall and made their way toward the church.
The evening had cooled, and the sky above Wild Rose Ridge was brushed with gold.
Main Street still carried the sounds of supper and wagon wheels, but the churchyard was quieter.
The little white church stood with its windows catching the last light.
The low stone wall beneath the maple tree waited as if it had been built for women who needed somewhere to sit while their hearts misbehaved.
Lottie did not sit.
Delly did.
That annoyed Lottie too.
“You are going to say he is wounded,” Lottie said.
Delly looked up at her. “He is.”
“Wounded men wound others without meaning to.”
“They can.”
“And I am romanticizing his pain.”
“Are you?”
Lottie’s breath caught. There it was. The worry beneath every careful question.
She gripped the folded drawing in both hands. “You think I have made him into a story.”
“We know you love stories.”
“I do. That does not mean I cannot love a man.”
Delly looked away first. Lottie saw it and pressed on, because if she stopped now she might lose courage.
“You think I am too young to know the difference between pity and love. So does he. You both keep handing me the same accusation wrapped in different paper.”
“I have never accused you of pitying him.”
“You have thought it.”
Delly’s gaze returned to her. “I have feared it.”
“That is worse.”
“No,” Delly said, and for once her voice rose. “It is not worse. It is honest. I have feared many things where you are concerned, and I will not apologize for loving you enough to be frightened.”
“I am not asking you to stop loving me. I am asking you to stop standing between me and every hard thing in the world.”
Delly’s mouth trembled once, barely, before she controlled it. Lottie saw it. The sight softened her and sharpened her at the same time.
“You have done it for five years,” Lottie said. “Since Mama and Papa died. Since there was only us, and you decided being fourteen meant becoming forty overnight. You kept bread on the table. You kept a roof over us. You kept me safe when no one else was there to care whether I was safe.”
Delly looked down at her hands.
“I love you for it,” Lottie said. “More than I know how to say without crying, which is terribly inconvenient right now because I am still angry with you.”
A faint, unwilling sound escaped Delly.
Lottie’s own eyes burned.
“You cannot keep me from being hurt,” she continued.
“Nobody can do that. Mama and Papa loved us better than anyone, and they still left us with grief we did not know how to carry. Love does not make a wall high enough to stop pain from entering. It only gives a person somewhere to go when it does.”
Delly said nothing.
Lottie stepped closer to the wall but still did not sit.
“You cannot stand in my doorway forever with your back to me,” she said. “You cannot keep testing every road before I put my foot on it. You cannot tell me to be sensible about Peterson when you married Jebediah Simms on Sunday after knowing him for only a day.”
Delly’s head lifted.
Lottie saw the name land.
Cecil.
Her sister did not correct it. That helped.
“You married a wounded man,” Lottie said. “A good man, yes. An honorable man. Wounded all the same. You can call it research, necessity, judgment, or whatever tidy word fits into your ledger, but I stood in church and watched your hands shake at the altar.”
Delly’s face had gone pale. Lottie hated she had hurt her. She kept going anyway, because some truths came out with edges no matter how gently one tried to carry them.
“You care for him,” Lottie said. “You may not know what to do with it yet, but you do. I have seen the way he looks at you. I have seen the way you notice him and then pretend you noticed the weather instead.”
“That is not fair.”
“No. It isn’t.” Lottie’s voice broke. “Neither is treating my heart like a hazard because it chose a man with visible wounds instead of invisible ones.”
Delly stood then.
For a moment, they faced each other across the churchyard, both breathing too hard, both holding hurt neither knew where to put down.
“I am trying,” Delly said, each word measured with difficulty, “to keep you from giving the whole of yourself to a man who may not stay.”
“I know.”
“He has not promised you marriage.”
“I know.”
“He gave you a name, yes. He gave you a drawing. Those are not small things, but they are not vows.”
“I know that too.”
“Why are you angry with me for saying what is true?”
“You say things like they are locked doors.”
Delly drew in a breath. Lottie wiped at her cheek, furious with the escaping tear.
“I want him. The whole of him. The hand, the name, the stubbornness, the fear, all of it. Not because I think I can fix him. Not because I think love will make the winter unhappen. I want him because I have seen who he is when he forgets to hide.”
Delly’s eyes filled. That almost stopped Lottie.
Almost.
“I am eighteen years old,” Lottie said. “I am young, yes. I am hopeful. I am also not foolish simply because hope is the language I speak best. I crossed half a continent, leaving behind the only life I knew. I am building a library in a town where people still think poetry needs supervision. I can choose a difficult man with my eyes open.”
Delly’s tears spilled first. That was the true shock of the evening. Her sister, who had not cried at the dock, or during the wedding, or when the Busy Bees nearly married her off through committee effort, stood beside the churchyard wall with tears sliding down her face.
“I don’t know how to stop being afraid for you,” Delly whispered.
Lottie’s anger cracked. It was still there, hot and sore beneath her ribs. It cracked enough for love to move through.
“I am not asking you to stop being afraid.”
“I hear danger in everything.”
“I know.”
“I see what could go wrong before I see what could go right.”
“I know that too.”
“I look at Peterson, and I see every way he could hurt you without meaning to.”
“I look at him and see every way he is trying not to.”
Delly covered her mouth with one hand. Lottie sat beside her on the wall at last.
For several seconds, neither spoke.