Page 84 of Charlotte

By evening, Bunting Day had turned into a potluck, and the meeting hall was full of music, lamplight, and the cheerful roar of a town proud of itself.

Lottie should have been delighted.

The lending-library table had been moved near the front wall, where everyone could see it beneath the new red, white, and blue swag.

Children darted between skirts and benches. Men stood near the back wall with tin cups in hand. Cornelia stood near her husband and corrected the children when they became rowdy with a calm authority of a schoolteacher who had survived worse than patriotic enthusiasm. Delly had arrived with Jebediah and was now listening to Mrs. Schulte discuss the Fourth of July program as if a town celebration required military command.

Peterson had worked the entire day. Lottie had watched him more than she meant to.

He had lifted ladders, steadied boards, hung bunting, moved crates, fixed a loose hinge on the meeting hall door, and carried in one of the benches when Mr. Prentiss complained of his back. Every task had been done quietly, as if helping were the easiest way for him to remain near the thing he cared about without admitting it aloud.

Helping had cost him. By late afternoon, his right hand had stiffened badly enough he stopped reaching with it unless he forgot himself. During supper, he kept it low against his side. When the fiddle started and the room filled with clapping, stomping, and calling for another tune, Peterson’s mouth had gone pale around the edges.

Then he slipped out the back door.

Lottie gave him a few minutes. Long enough he would not feel chased. Not so long she could pretend she had not noticed.

Then she set down her cup, murmured something about air, and followed him into the night. The dusk behind the meeting hall had gone deep blue and cool. Music thumped through the log wall, muffled by timber and laughter. Lantern glow spilled in a narrow bar across the packed dirt near the back steps, but beyond it, the shadows gathered beneath the eaves.

Peterson sat on an overturned crate with his hat on the ground beside him and his head bowed over his right hand.

He had removed the glove. A length of soft cloth lay partly unwound around his palm, and he was trying to work it loose with his left hand and his teeth. The motion was clumsy, frustrated, and private enough Lottie knew at once he had not heard her come out.

She stopped. Two fingers ended at the second knuckle. The scarred skin had drawn tight over the bones, pale in some places and red in others from the day’s work. The knuckles were swollen. The whole hand looked sore, overused, and stubbornly brave.

His face hurt her more than the hand did.

There was no anger in it now. No gruffness. Only weariness, pain, and the worn-out concentration of a man tending himself because he had long ago decided that was the only way tending happened.

“Let me,” Lottie said softly.

Peterson came up off the crate so fast he nearly knocked it over. His right hand jerked behind his back.

“Go on inside, Miss Bellamy.”

“Mr. Peterson.”

“This is no place for you.”

“It seems to be precisely where I am needed.”

His jaw tightened. “I said go back to the music.”

The harshness was not anger. Lottie knew the difference now. This was fear. She stepped closer, stopping just beyond arm’s reach. “Peterson, sit down, please.”

His gaze lifted to hers. She said his name gently, not as an order and not as pity. Simply as the name he had allowed her to use.

His jaw tightened. “Go back inside, Lottie.”

Lottie let out a little huff. “Then sit down, Peterson.”

A faint breath left him. It might have been a laugh if it had not hurt so much.

“You worked that hand all day,” she said. “For the library, for the town, and for every person who found a task and decided you were the man strong enough to do it. Now it is paining you, and you are back here trying to wrap it with your teeth.”

“I’ve done it before.”

“I believe you. You do not have to do it tonight.”