Page 57 of Charlotte

“And?”

“He accepted. Mostly.”

“Mostly is often what we get.”

Lottie looked toward the shelf where Tennyson’s space remained open.

“He read to me.”

Delly’s brows rose.

“Only four lines.”

“That is not only.”

“No,” Lottie whispered. “I know.”

Delly studied her face, then glanced toward the empty place on the shelf. “What did you learn?”

Lottie thought of Peterson’s voice in the pines, his mother’s name for him, the way he had said work was safer.

“That names can be shelters,” she said. “Some men have lived so long under one roof, they do not know how to step into another.”

Delly was quiet for a moment. Then she reached for the ledger, turned it toward herself, and looked at Peterson’s entry.

PETERSON.

She did not add a thing. For that, Lottie loved her.

Outside, the town settled into lamplight and sawdust and the distant sounds of a logging camp still holding its breath after blood. Inside, the first shelf of the Wild Rose Ridge library stood steady against the wall.

One specific book was missing from it.

One careful man had not returned it yet.

Lottie, who had once thought romance would move in grand speeches and certain answers, suspected it might be built instead of apologies, restraint, and the courage to leave a blank space untouched until it was offered.

Chapter Eight

June 24, 1886 — The Meeting Hall

By Thursday morning, Charlotte Bellamy had discovered the Wild Rose Ridge library had three pressing needs.

More shelves.

More rules.

Fewer people trying to help by moving books into the wrong piles.

Mrs. Hanford believed poetry should be shelved where it could be monitored. Mrs. Beck thought poetry should be placed near the front because romance improves the atmosphere. Mrs. Schulte proposed a compromise involving labels, oversight, and a borrowing limit for unmarried men.

Lottie listened to all three opinions with the calm of a woman who had once read aloud through Mrs. Whitmore’s entire argument with her nephew about whether Dickens encouraged idleness. A person who could survive that could survive almost anything.

“Poetry,” Lottie said at last, “will go on the shelf with literature.”

Mrs. Hanford frowned. “That is broad.”

“Yes, books are often broad.”