Page 49 of Charlotte

Delly had narrowed her eyes. “You are learning bad habits from loggers.”

“From your husband, perhaps.”

That had sent a little color into Delly’s cheeks, and Lottie considered the morning well begun.

Now Delly was gone, likely up toward the camp with Mr. Simms’s dinner pail, because married life had apparently made her sister both more practical and less predictable. Lottie found that comforting. If Delly could be surprised by her own heart, perhaps everyone else had permission to be less certain too.

Jack cleared his throat near the doorway.

Lottie turned. “Good morning.”

“Mornin’, Miss Bellamy.” Jack held his hat in both hands and looked toward the shelf with exaggerated seriousness. “We come to inspect the progress of civilization.”

“That is an enormous responsibility for three men before dinner.”

Olsen nodded. “Told him that.”

The red-bearded logger leaned against the doorframe. “Heard Peterson’s got himself signed up for the book.”

“He has borrowed a book, yes.”

“Poetry,” Jack said, as if announcing a rare medical condition.

“Tennyson,” Lottie corrected.

“That worse?”

“Not unless one is afraid of feelings.”

Olsen looked at Jack. “Told you not to start.”

Lottie tucked a smile away and reached for the ledger. “Would any of you like to borrow something?”

Jack took one step back. “Didn’t come for that.”

“Civilization often surprises people.”

The red-bearded man laughed. “You sound like Peterson’s ma.”

Jack cut the red-bearded man a quick look, and Olsen suddenly became very interested in a splinter on the doorframe. Lottie set down the ledger more carefully than necessary.

Peterson’s mother.

She had never thought about his mother. Of course, he had one. Every man did or had. In her mind, Peterson had arrived in Wild Rose Ridge fully formed from pine, silence, and bad weather. The idea of him as a boy, of a woman fussing over his hair or calling him to supper, unsettled something tender in her.

“What was she like?” Lottie asked before wisdom could stop her.

The red-bearded man shrugged. “Wouldn’t know. Heard old Tucker mention once she called him Cecil. That true, Jack?”

Jack’s smile appeared and vanished. “Leave it.”

Cecil.

The name landed softly.

It did not seem to belong to the man who stood in doorways with his hand hidden, or who made careful shelving lists, or who warned her not to build too much from borrowed hope. It sounded gentler than Peterson. Younger too. A name spoken over a cradle, written in a Bible, called across a yard in summer.

Cecil Peterson.