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“You’re open for another two hours, right?”
“Tuesdays until nine for the past seventy-five years.”
And she’d probably been at her desk for every one of them. Sara remembered visiting the library as a child and seeing Miss Perkins in her position of power at the main desk, guarding the library with an eagle eye. She hadn’t mellowed much with age.
“Thanks, Miss Perkins.”
“No gum in the library, Miss Hanrahan. And no more over-dues on those Black Stallion books, you hear?”
Sara looked over her shoulder and caught a hint of a twinkle in the old woman’s eye. “You remember?”
“I don’t forget the children who show promise, Miss Hanrahan,” she said crisply.
Before Sara could reply, the librarian turned her back and began sorting through the stack of mail on her desk.
Smiling, Sara headed down the hall and up the narrow stairs. Who would have guessed that the woman once known as the “Witch of the Ryansville Library”—at least by the kids in Sara’s high-school class—actually had a sense of humor?
A musty smell assailed Sara as she opened the door to the room containing the newspaper stacks, flipped on the switch, and stepped inside.
The single light fixture, a two-bulb affair suspended from the ceiling, illuminated an oak desk in the center of the room. The stacks themselves loomed deep in the shadows.
Sara worked her way down the aisles, squinting at the spidery writing on the small cards tacked to the end of each aisle: 1895–1905, 1906–1915. 1916–1935...
As the years passed, the Ryansville Gazette had evolved from something akin to a newsletter to a standard newspaper format with a substantial number of pages.
She’d come to research articles over the past five years regarding the Sanderson plant, but when she started looking, she took a sharp breath. Everything would be here—the details of her father’s arrest, the reports of Franklin’s death. She’d been so young back then and had understood little of what was going on.
Moving down the narrow aisle, she found the issues for that year. June...July...August. Her heart skipped a beat. September...October.
Here was the event that had altered her life forever. The one that had changed Bernice from a busy mother of two who’d attended church and the PTA, to a silent, embittered woman who survived as a seamstress and rarely left her home.
With trembling hands, Sara lifted the September through December issues and took them to the table. She stood there for a moment, afraid of what she’d find and unable to make the first move.
From the corner of her eye she glimpsed someone large step into the room. Startled, she spun away from the table and found herself looking up at Nathan Roswell—who apparently hadn’t expected to see anyone else up here, either.
She gave an embarrassed laugh. “I’m sorry—you surprised me.”
“Same here.” An easy grin deepened the dimples in his cheeks. When he wasn’t frowning at her, the man had a nice smile. “I wasn’t sure anyone ever came upstairs.”
“It’s...uh...my first time up here.” She shot a quick glance at her collection of papers on the table, then leaned over to scoop them up. He leaned over at the same time and their fingers collided.
He must have felt the same sensation, the same flicker of surprise she did, because he stilled, lifted his gaze to meet hers.
“I’ll...just put these back and get out of your way,” she managed after an awkward silence.
He looked down at the stack of newspapers on the desk and apparently recognized the significance of the year, because his brows lowered. So he knew about her father, then. Was that why he’d looked at her with such suspicion both times they’d met? Did he figure she was just as capable of criminal acts?
“That was a tough year, wasn’t it? I’m sorry about your dad,” he said quietly.
“Thanks.” She shelved the newspapers and turned to leave, not wanting to face questions she couldn’t answer.
“I wasn’t living here when it happened,” he continued, “but I remembered hearing rumors. Clay Benson gave me the details. I can imagine how hard it was for you and your family.”
No, you can’t, she thought. A young boy of wealth and privilege wouldn’t have had a clue back then, and the man he’d become wouldn’t be able to do much better. What would be a tragedy in his life—a day when the Rolls didn’t start? A downturn on Wall Street?
She gave him a grim smile. “We’re all doing fine now. See you around.”
The casual words of farewell were exactly right, leaving no room for further discussion and no hint of encouragement. Any interest in this man would only spell trouble on a personal and professional level.
