Page 88 of Charlotte

He had said he was going back in; he didn’t say he did not care. Not that she had imagined the tenderness between them.

She pressed her fingers lightly to her mouth and looked toward the bright doorway where he had gone.

Peterson was still fighting.

For the first time, Lottie wondered if he was no longer fighting her.

Chapter Thirteen

June 28, 1886 — The Schoolhouse Lot

No matter what she thought, Peterson was not avoiding her. Avoiding would have been easier to understand.

By noon, Lottie had heard his name from every direction except his own mouth. Mr. Olsen came into the meeting hall to find out how many shelves Lottie thought she would need to display all the books.

Mr. Stafford stopped by with a measuring string, a carpenter’s pencil behind his ear, and a question about whether a permanent library ought to have two front windows or three.

Luke appeared long enough to ask Cornelia whether the ground beside the schoolhouse stayed dry after the spring rains, then vanished again before Lottie could ask why he needed to know.

At dinner, she had pieced together enough to be dangerous. Peterson was not avoiding her. He was building something where she could not see him do it.

Lottie left the meeting hall with her bonnet ribbons untied, the lending ledger still open on the table, and Mrs. Schulte calling after her that library property should not be abandoned in a time of civic expansion.

“I am expanding civically,” Lottie called back, and kept walking.

The schoolhouse stood on the edge of town where the land lifted gently above the main road. Beyond it, the pines gathered thick and dark, and below it, Wild Rose Ridge spread itself in a scatter of roofs, wagons, drying laundry, smoke, and summer dust. The white church showed through the trees to the left. The meeting hall sat farther down the street, still wearing its bunting from yesterday.

Beside the schoolhouse was an open patch of ground Lottie had walked past a dozen times without seeing properly.

Today, it had stakes driven into the dirt.

Twine marked a long rectangle. A pile of stones sat near one corner. Two sawhorses stood in the shade of a fir tree. Several planks lay stacked nearby, and a carpenter’s square rested on top of them.

Peterson stood inside the marked-off shape with his hat low and his sleeves rolled to his forearms – both forearms, looking down at a paper in his left hand.

Lottie stopped at the edge of the lot. For one breath, she forgot to be indignant.

The rectangle was not large. It was only earth, string, stakes, and boards. She saw it all at once as if walls had already risen: shelves along the sides, a table beneath the window, children sitting cross-legged near the stove, Delly’s ledger on a desk, Cornelia bringing over primers from the schoolhouse, Peterson standing near the door pretending not to be proud of it.

A library.

A real one.

Her throat tightened so quickly she had to swallow before speaking.

“You kissed me last night and started building my library this morning,” she said. “Do not ask me to believe both are committee business.”

Peterson looked up. He did not smile.

That was probably wise, because if he had, she might have forgiven him too quickly.

“This is not your library,” he said.

“Oh?” Disappointment clouded her thoughts.

“It belongs to the town.”

“How fortunate the town sent me to ask about it.”