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So he was going to make her do all the work. Figured. “Thinking about staying?”
They pulled the tarp out flat on the lawn, ready for use. “Why would you care?” he asked with that annoying twinkle in his eye.
“No reason. They could use your help is all.”
“And...”
His trailed-off prompts were getting annoying. “Fine,” she huffed. “It’s good to have you around, Freddy. I’d miss you if you went. Are you happy now?”
“You know,” he said, a broad smile on his face, “I really am.”
And smoke and fire and all, Ginny found she was too.
LOUISE
SEPTEMBER 9
In the bright morning light, the damage looked much worse than Frederick’s initial dawn report had indicated, but Louise supposed that’s the way fires always were. With permission from the fire chief, she’d circled the building for her inspection, though he’d warned against stepping inside until they had fully assessed the roof.
By the time she returned to the front lawn, the crowd gathered there had grown. Not to Fire Muster level, certainly, but numbering in the dozens.
The usual spectators flocking to the site of a disaster, she supposed.
Then she looked more carefully. There were a few bystanders lurking around the edges, but most seemed to know exactly what they were doing there.
There was Hamish, lending his precious tools to book club members to clear the rubble. Avis, barking orders to anyone who would listen—goodness, how had she ever considered the librarian fragile? Delphie, handing out sandwiches to the exhausted firemen. Martina, her children beside her, sorting people into groups. Muriel Whitson, holding a broom and ready to charge. Frederick and Ginny, working together to unfold a tarp on the lawn.
They were all here, and more—longtime members of theassociation library, newcomers to the book club, fellow church members, even strangers. Ready to do all they could.
Some of the volunteers, cleared by the fire chief, were beginning a brigade to pass books out of the building to the lawn. Louise had pinned her hair in a bandanna for the occasion, like one of Milton Hanover’s foundry workers. Today they were up against a different sort of war work, and she was prepared to do her part.
Until Delphie marched over, planting herself in Louise’s path. She had been quite pleased when Louise announced her decision privately the day before—along with an apology. As usual, they’d stumbled back into their old familiarity, their quarrel set aside.
“Just so you know,” Delphie said, jerking her head toward the building, “everyone hates those old chairs you put in there. Fine to look at, but they make your backside ache if you sit in them for longer than fifteen minutes.”
Louise had noticed but thought perhaps it was only a consequence of aging. “Then it’s a good thing we’ll likely be forced to order new ones now.”
With a satisfied nod, Delphie thrust a familiar book at her:Pride and Prejudice. The copy her father had left her. “Martina found this. She thought you’d want to keep it apart from the rest.”
“Ah. So it survived.” Naturally romantic nonsense like her father’s favorite book would remain while more worthwhile books turned to ashes.
But Delphie didn’t hurry back to her place at the tarp. “Ever look inside?”
“No.” Why would she?
“Muriel told us to fan through the pages of the books to knock out any dirt or soot” was all Delphie offered in answer. “We saw something that might interest you.”
With that, she hobbled off to supervise another station ofworkers by telling them exactly what they were doing wrong, leaving Louise alone with the old novel.
What had the antiques expert said? Something like“The printing was too late for it to be worth much, not to mention the condition and the interior markings.”One line in a detailed letter that could have referred to stray underlines or blots on the pages. It hadn’t even occurred to her to check.
Sitting on the stoop of the library while volunteers swirled around her, Louise opened to the title page to read a note in spindly, shaky handwriting.
December 10, 1918
Dearest Louise,
Now that my time has come to leave this world, I realize there is much I have not told you. Far too much to fit on this flyleaf, so I’ll begin with the most important:
