The Librarian of Boone's Hollow - Kim Vogel Sawyer Page 0,108

jam on her palms the way a crown bearer carried the king’s headpiece.

“I brought a peace offering. May I come in?”

“You don’t owe me a peace offering. But please come in.” He took the jar and gestured her over the threshold. She entered with greater hesitation than he’d ever witnessed, then planted herself near one of the empty shelves and hung her head. She still felt guilty, and she shouldn’t. This guilt wasn’t hers to carry. He put the jar on the dresser in his living quarters, then faced her, sliding his hands into his trouser pockets. “Listen, Addie, put it out of your mind that you’re responsible for what happened here. Because you aren’t.”

She kept her head low but peeked at him through her eyelashes. “That’s kind of you to say, but you know it isn’t true. I’ve made an enemy of Bettina by becoming your friend”—

His pulse skittered.

—“and of the rest of the town by becoming Nanny Fay’s friend. They all want me to leave. It makes perfect sense that if the library program has to close, I’ll be sent away. So I…” She held her hands to the empty shelves. “I caused this.”

He hurried to her and took her hands. “No, you didn’t. Ignorance did this. Hatred did this. Jealousy did this.” He squeezed her hands and dipped his knees, meeting her uncertain gaze. He sent up a silent prayer for her to hear and accept the truth. “Addie, you are none of those things. You’re intelligent and caring and giving. Don’t blame yourself for someone else’s foolish choices, please?”

She sucked in her lips and stared into his eyes for several seconds. She stood so still he wondered if she’d stopped breathing. Then she gave a little nod. “All right. I’ll try.”

He stood straight and released her hands. “Attagirl.”

She grinned. “Do you need some help? Nanny Fay always sleeps on Sunday afternoons, and she works so hard the rest of the week that I don’t like to disturb her. I tried writing in my room, but I’m too restless to sit and write today.” She wrinkled her nose. “Besides, I really want to know what’s inside those crates.”

Emmett laughed. Never had a laugh felt as good as this one. He beckoned with a twitch of his finger. “I was just fixing to open the first one. Come peek.”

She skipped to the crate and leaned in as he lifted the lid aside. She yanked away a wad of rumpled paper and squealed. “Picture books!”

He couldn’t resist another laugh. Her delight was contagious. He opened the second crate, which contained novels, textbooks, cookbooks, and a variety of nonfiction books, and finally the third, where they found the promised scrapbooking materials, as well as dozens of magazines.

Addie lifted out a blank scrapbook and sank onto the floor. She laid the cloth-covered cardboard book in the crook of her bent legs. “I hope you haven’t discarded the magazines we had before. I know they were in pretty sad shape even before they got thrown around like confetti”—

Her choice of words inspired a grin, even though the circumstances weren’t funny at all.

—“but that doesn’t mean the pages can’t be salvaged.”

Emmett gestured to the table and the stacks of damaged books and magazines. “I haven’t thrown out anything yet. I want to try to fix as many as possible, but some are probably beyond repair.” The thought made him sick to his stomach, but a seltzer tablet wouldn’t cure his ache.

She flipped the top cover back and forth between her hands and gazed at him, her expression thoughtful. “Before I came here, I stayed with a woman who cut up old clothes and made quilts for the destitute and downtrodden. She taught me to utilize every possible inch of the clothing pieces. If we apply the same technique to the magazine pages, we could fill every one of these scrapbooks and have unique instructional yet fun books to share with the hills people.”

Emmett squatted in front of her, his elbows on his knees. “Would you want to take on the project? Be the…scrapbook lady?”

She chewed the corner of her lip. “You mean I would spend the whole day making scrapbooks instead of taking books around to folks?”

He nodded.

She lowered her head and traced circles on the scrapbook’s cover with her finger. “As much as it pains me to concede defeat, I can’t let my stubbornness stand in the way of people receiving items that could educate, inform, and inspire them. They