Page 54 of Charlotte

He did not offer her help over the uneven ground. A day ago, that might have stung. Now she wondered whether he was afraid she would take the offer for more than he meant, or whether he simply did not trust his hand. There were too many possibilities, and not one of them belonged to her until he gave it to her.

She set the cookie tin on the fallen log.

“I am sorry,” she said.

He looked at her then.

She kept going before courage could falter, but she remembered Delly’s warning and kept the words plain. “I heard your first name from someone else. I liked it, and I used it without understanding what it cost you. Then I did worse and used it where others could hear. I am sorry.”

Peterson rubbed his thumb along the edge of the Tennyson.

“You didn’t know.”

“I know now.”

“That’s more than most manage.”

The bitterness in his voice was quiet, but it was there. Lottie folded her hands at her waist to keep from reaching toward him.

“May I ask you one question? Just one,” she said. “If you say no, I will not ask it again tonight.”

He looked toward the camp, then back at her. “One.”

“Is it the name itself you dislike, or the way people handle it?”

For a moment, he did not answer. Wind moved through the pines overhead. Somewhere behind them, a man laughed too loudly and was hushed at once. The camp was tender tonight after the accident. Even the rough men seemed to know it.

“At first, it was only the teasing,” Peterson said.

Lottie held still, not daring to breathe.

“My mother used it.” He looked down at the book in his hand. “She said it sounded as if it belonged to someone decent. Soft, maybe, but decent. Camps do not have much use for soft boys.”

The words pressed against her heart.

“They made sport of it?”

“Boys did. Men too, when they were bored or mean. Cecil sounded like lace cuffs to them. Peterson sounded like work.” His left hand tightened on the book. “Work was safer.”

Lottie’s mind drifted to the library, contemplating how people construct their sense of purpose and safety from the labels society bestows upon them.

“I will call you Peterson,” she said. His gaze lifted. “Unless you tell me otherwise. Not because I think Peterson is all of you, but because I will not take what you have not offered.”

He stared at her long enough that her courage wavered. Then he looked away.

“That is a careful enough answer.”

“I have been trying to learn from my mistakes.”

“You learn fast.”

“Not always. Delly tells me, I sometimes mistake enthusiasm for evidence.”

His mouth moved again. This time the smile lasted long enough to count.

“She is not wrong.”

“She is very often not wrong. It is a burden to love her.”