Page 51 of Charlotte

“I don’t know.” The honest answer did not help. It was better than a false one, but only barely. Peterson hesitated, then came back two steps. “Simms is there.”

Those three words were meant as comfort. Lottie knew they were. He had given her what he could spare in the middle of an alarm.

She held on to them.

“Thank you.”

He nodded and turned again.

“Cecil.”

The name left her mouth before she could call it back. Peterson stopped. So did the two men passing the mercantile. So did Luke, who had come running from the cookhouse road and was close enough to hear.

Lottie knew the mistake the instant she saw Luke’s expression.

His grin came first, quick and foolish. “Who’s Cecil?”

Peterson did not turn around.

The red-bearded logger from earlier, appearing behind Luke, gave a low whistle. “Hear that? Miss Bellamy’s found your Sunday name.”

Luke laughed, but there was uncertainty in it now, as if he knew he had stepped onto ground that might not hold. “Never thought I’d hear that name outside a hymnbook.”

Lottie’s cheeks burned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

Peterson turned then. He did not look at the men.

He looked at her.

There was no anger in his eyes. Anger would have been easier to bear. This was worse: a flat hurt, quickly shuttered, as if he had expected better from the world but not for very long.

“Peterson,” he said.

One word.

Then he went up the camp road.

The men stopped laughing.

Luke took off his hat and dragged one hand through his hair. “Miss, I—”

“Don’t,” Lottie said, lifting her hand to block them.

Her voice came out calm enough to surprise her.

Luke swallowed. “We didn’t mean harm.”

“No,” she said. “That seems to be how harm slips through.”

She went back into the meeting hall because if she stood outside one moment longer, she would cry in the street, and she had not crossed half a continent to provide entertainment to men with more mouth than sense.

Inside, the little library looked exactly as it had before. That felt unfair. The shelf stood straight. The books waited. Mrs. Beck’s cookies sat in a covered tin. Peterson’s name remained in the ledger, unchanged by her clumsy tongue.

Lottie sat at the lending table and pressed both hands together in her lap.

She had not meant to hurt him.

It also undid nothing.