The Giver of Stars(55)
‘I understand your reasoning.’
‘Then what?’
‘I think.’ He pushed his plate away. ‘I guess I’m just … afraid.’
‘Of what?’
He sighed. Turned her hand over in his. ‘That one day you’ll tell me to go.’
How could she convey to him how wrong he was? How could she let him know that he was in all ways the finest man she had known and that the few months she had spent without him had made every day feel like the bleakest winter? How could she tell him that even now, ten years in, him simply resting a hand on her waist made something buck and spark inside her?
She got up from the table and placed her arms around his neck, her seat upon his lap. She rested her cheek against his, so that her words were murmured in his ear. ‘I will never, ever tell you to go. There is no chance of that happening, Mr Gustavsson. I will be with you, day and night, for as long as you can stand me. And you know I never say anything I don’t mean.’
He was late to work, of course. He struggled to feel bad about it all day.
A holly wreath, a corn-husk doll, a pot of preserved fruit or a bracelet of polished stone; as Christmas drew closer, the girls would return each day with small thank-you gifts from the homes they visited. They pooled them at the library building, agreeing that something should be given to Fred Guisler for his support over the past six months but that bracelets and dollies were probably a little wide of the mark. Margery suspected there was only one gift that would make him happy, and that was something he was unlikely to put on his Christmas list.
Alice’s life now seemed to revolve around the library. She was fiercely efficient, had memorized every route from Baileyville to Jeffersonville, never balking at any extra mileage that Margery threw her way. She was the first to arrive each morning, striding down the dark, frost-covered road, and the last to leave at night, determinedly stitching books that Sophia would unpick and redo after she had gone. She had grown wiry, muscles newly visible in her arms, her skin weathered by long days exposed to the elements, and her face was set so that her lovely smile rarely lit her features, but flashed up only when it was required, and rarely stretched as far as her eyes.
‘That girl is the saddest thing I ever saw,’ Sophia remarked, as Alice brought her saddle in and went straight back out into the dark to give Spirit a rub-down. ‘Something ain’t right in that house.’ She shook her head as she sucked a piece of cotton, ready to rethread her needle.
‘I used to think Bennett Van Cleve was the greatest catch in Baileyville,’ said Izzy. ‘But I watched him walking with Alice from church the other day and he acts like she’s got chiggers. Wouldn’t even take her arm.’
‘He’s a pig,’ said Beth. ‘And that damn Peggy Foreman is always strolling past him in her finest, with her girls, trying to catch his eye.’
‘Ssh,’ said Margery, evenly. ‘No need for gossip. Alice is our friend.’
‘I meant it nicely,’ Izzy protested.
‘Doesn’t stop it being gossip,’ Margery said. She glanced at Fred, who was focused intently on framing three maps of the new routes they had taken on that week. He often stayed late, finding excuses to walk down and fix things that didn’t really need fixing long after he had finished with his horses, stacking up logs for the burner, or blocking draughts with rags. It didn’t take a genius to work out why.
‘How you doing, Kathleen?’
Kathleen Bligh wiped her forehead, and tried to raise a smile. ‘Oh, you know. Getting by.’
There was a peculiar weighted quality to the silence left by Garrett Bligh’s absence. On the table there was a selection of filled bowls and baskets, food gifts left by neighbours, and some mourning cards stood on the mantel; outside the back door two hens ruffled their feathers on a large stack of firewood that had arrived, unheralded, overnight. Further up the slope, the newly carved gravestone stood bleached white against its neighbours. People of the mountain, whatever anyone said about them, knew how to look after their own. So the cabin was warm, and food ready to be eaten, but the interior was still, motes floating in the undisturbed air, and the children lay motionless in the cot, their arms thrust across each other in afternoon sleep, as if the whole domestic tableau were suspended in time.
‘I brought you some magazines. I know you couldn’t face reading the last few, but I thought maybe some short stories? Or something for the children?’
‘You’re very kind,’ said Kathleen.
Alice stole a look at her. She didn’t know what to do, faced with the enormity of the woman’s loss. It was etched across Kathleen’s face, in her downturned eyes and the new lines around her mouth, visible in the effort it seemed to take her just to move her hand across her brow. She looked almost unbearably weary, as if she just wanted to lie down and sleep for a million years.
‘Did you want a drink?’ Kathleen said abruptly, as if remembering herself. She glanced behind her. ‘I think I have some coffee. Should still be warm. I’m sure I made some this morning.’
‘I’m fine. Thank you.’
They sat in the little room and Kathleen pulled her shawl around her. Outside, the mountain was silent, the trees bare, and the grey sky hung low over the spindly branches. A solitary crow broke the stillness, its harsh, abrasive cry rising above the mountaintop. Spirit, tied to the fence post, stamped a foot, steam rising from her nostrils.