“You okay?”
Alice blew her nose. She had begun to sober immediately, out in the cool air. “Fine. Fine . . .” She looked up at the skies. “Actually, no. Not really.”
“Can I help?”
“I don’t think it’s something anyone else can help with.”
Margery leaned back against the wall, so that she was looking up at the mountains behind them. “There’s not much I haven’t seen and heard these thirty-eight years. I’m pretty sure whatever you have to say isn’t going to knock me off my heels.”
Alice closed her eyes. If she put it out there, it became real, a living, breathing thing that she would have to do something about. Her gaze flickered to Margery and away again.
“And if you think I’m the type to go talking, Alice Van Cleve, you really haven’t worked me out at all.”
“Mr. Van Cleve keeps going on about us not having any babies.”
“Hell, that’s just standard round here. The moment you put a ring on that finger they’re all just counting down—”
“But that’s just it. It’s Bennett.” Alice wrung her hands together. “It’s been months and he just—he won’t—”
Margery let the words settle. She waited, as if to check that she had heard right. “He won’t . . . ?”
Alice took a deep breath. “It all started well enough. We’d been waiting so long, what with the journey and everything, and actually it was lovely and then just as things . . . were about to—well . . . Mr. Van Cleve shouted something through the wall—I think he thought he was being encouraging—and we were both a little startled, and then everything stopped and I opened my eyes and Bennett wasn’t even looking at me and he seemed so cross and distant and when I asked him if everything was okay he told me I was . . .” she gulped “. . . unladylike for asking.”
Margery waited.
“So I lay back down and waited. And he . . . well, I thought it was going to happen. But then we could hear Mr. Van Cleve clomping around next door and . . . well . . . that was that. And I tried to whisper something but he got cross and acted like it was my fault. But I don’t really know. Because I’ve never . . . so I can’t be sure whether it’s something I’m doing wrong or he’s doing wrong but, either way, his father is always next door and the walls are so thin and, well, Bennett, he just acts like I’m something he doesn’t want to get too close to any more. And it’s not like it’s one of those things you can talk about.” The words tumbled out, unchecked. She felt her face flood with color. “I want to be a good wife. I really do. It just feels . . . impossible.”
“So . . . let me get this straight. You haven’t . . .”
“I don’t know! Because I don’t know what it’s supposed to be like!” She shook her head, then covered her face with her hands, as if horrified that she was even saying the words out loud.
Margery frowned at her boots. “Stay there,” she said.
She disappeared into the cabin, where the singing had reached a new pitch. Alice listened anxiously, fearing the sudden cessation of voices that would suggest Margery had betrayed her. But instead the song lifted, and a little burst of applause met a musical flourish, and she heard Beth’s muffled whoop! Then the door opened, allowing the voices to swell briefly, and Margery tripped back down the steps holding a small blue book, which she handed to Alice. “Okay, so this doesn’t go in the ledger. This, we pass around to ladies who, perhaps, need a little help in some of the matters you’ve mentioned.”
Alice stared at the leather-bound book.
“It’s just facts. I’ve promised it to a woman over at Miller’s Creek on my Monday route, but you can take a look over the weekend and see if there’s anything in there might help.”
Alice flicked through, startling at the words sex, naked, womb. She blushed. “This goes out with the library books?”
“Let’s just say it’s an unofficial part of our service, given it has a bit of a checkered history through our courts. It doesn’t exist in the ledger, and it doesn’t sit out on the shelves. We just keep it between ourselves.”
“Have you read it?”
“Cover to cover and more than once. And I can tell you it has brought me