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“Not sure. Though I did give her a suggestion for a replacement.”
Something about the way Anthony said it, heavy with implication, made Avis look up. Even in the shadows created by the newly darkened windows, she could see a smirk spreading on her brother’s face, and all thoughts of enlistment faded. “Anthony, you don’t meanme?”
“Come on, sis.” He directed his most charming grin at her. “You do half of our cataloguing when I get behind anyway.”
“An exaggeration.”
“And you have most of the Dewey decimal system memorized.”
Not an exaggeration, which unfortunately meant his idea had some legitimacy. “I couldn’t possibly. Not as a married woman.” She twisted her wedding band, a lovely solitaire, around her finger. Jobs, her mother had impressed on her, were for women who didn’t have a husband’s suit to iron and dinner to put on the table each night.
“Thousands of women are taking up war work,” Russell reasoned, shrugging.
He always took Anthony’s side. She gritted her teeth against a prickle of resentment. It was the price she paid for marrying her brother’s best friend, she supposed.
She was about to reply that that was quite a different matter when Anthony’s grin softened. “Anyway, I thought you’d be glad for something to do when Russ and I ship out.”
Despite herself, Avis’s jaw tightened, and behind her, Russell coughed. Anthony looked from one to the other, confusion on his face.
At the same time Russell began with “We haven’t actually—” she tripped over him with “Russell isn’t—”
Russell filled the awkward pause with a vague “We’re still discussing it, that’s all. Enlistment, I mean.”
Even that was only halfway true. It had been weeks since Russell had brought it up after their last argument.
Unlike the enthusiastic flag-waving masses who’d turned out when the United States declared war, Avis looked ahead to the long separations, half-empty beds, and casualty notices printed in the newspapers.
And, try as she might to ignore it, her mother’s warning, the night before the wedding and after too much champagne,whispered back into her mind,“Keep your man nearby as long as you can, or he might be tempted to wander in other ways.”
Anthony blinked behind his narrow eyeglasses, face reddening. “Sorry. I thought ... anyway, I didn’t realize.” He cleared his throat, moving the discussion into safer territory. “Still, it would be good for you to get out of the house, Avis.”
“But I don’t have a college degree,” she said, “and, in case you’ve forgotten in the five minutes since it was brought up, I don’t even read books.”
“You could learn.” Anthony scooped up the library keys from the empty sugar bowl where she’d insisted he keep them after misplacing them one too many times. “Seriously, Avis, we need someone to keep the doors open.”
“It’s not as if Miss Cavendish will shut the place down.”
At that, Anthony hesitated, looking back toward the oil painting of the somber man overlooking the shelves, the only piece of artwork allowed on the walls. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. It was her father’s pet project, not hers. Something about this place ... well, she pays the bills, but she doesn’t seem to like it.”
“Why’s that?” Russell asked.
“Beats me. With Miss C, you learn not to pry.” He tossed the keys in the air and headed to the entryway with his usual jaunty step. “I love this place, sis.”
As if he needed to tell her. He’d spent at least half his childhood either here or buried in one of the adventure novels he’d checked out from the shelves.
When he’d left for college, everyone, Mother included, expected he would “make something of himself” and never return. But he’d come back to Derby four years ago, degree in hand, content to spend the rest of his life in the small coastal town working at the association library that had once been his refuge.
“Come on, Avis. Promise me you’ll keep it up for me whileI’m gone. Please?” He looked down at her with those big, earnest brown eyes that had worn her down since childhood.
“I promise,” she found herself saying.
The whoop he let out while tackling her with a hug was probably the loudest noise the staid old building had heard in ages, and Avis couldn’t help smiling.
Really, this place might benefit from a woman’s touch. Besides, Anthony wouldn’t be gone long, and if she could get through the war cataloging books without actually having to read them, why, no one would be the wiser.
GINNY ATKINS
JANUARY 31, 1942
