Page 33 of Charlotte

“They’re just brackets,” he said.

“They are not.”

His left hand tightened at his side.

Lottie looked down at the parcel. “They are the first pieces of the library someone brought without being asked.”

A faint flush rose beneath his beard. “Cornelia asked most of the town twice last winter.”

“I did not ask you.”

“No.”

“You brought them anyway.”

He shifted his weight. “A shelf without brackets is only a plank hoping for the best.”

“That sounds like something my sister would say.”

“Then your sister is likely right.”

“She usually is. It is one of her harder qualities.”

“One day… maybe…” He shifted from foot to foot. “Your library will have its own building.”

“I hope so.”

This time, he smiled. Only a little, and only for a moment, but enough.

Lottie wanted to put the whole morning inside a book and press it flat between clean pages so she could keep it forever.

From inside the hotel, Mrs. Beck’s delighted voice carried through the open window. “Oh, look! He brought her something.”

Mr. Peterson’s smile vanished.

Mrs. Hanford answered, “Beatrice, lower your voice. The whole street does not need to know.”

“The whole street has eyes,” Mrs. Beck said.

Peterson stepped back from the porch post. His right hand drew closer against him.

Lottie hated that. Not Mrs. Beck precisely, who meant well, but the way every bit of public attention seemed to put a wall back into Mr. Peterson’s shoulders.

“They mean no harm,” she said softly.

“I know.”

“Yet harm finds its way.”

His gaze came back to her. She had surprised him. She could see that.

Lottie was not Delly. She did not catalog people. She did not keep columns of defects and risks. She had sat beside Mrs. Whitmore in Chicago for two years, reading aloud when the old woman’s eyes grew tired, and she had learned to hear the difference between complaint and ache. Mr. Peterson carried an ache in him. Not loudly. Never loudly. It showed in the care he took not to be seen.

The bundle of brackets pressed against her palms.

“Thank you,” she said. “Truly. I will show Cornelia at once, and if Delly were here, she would probably make a note you are useful.”

His face closed.