Alice pondered Sophia’s dark skin, and wondered, if she was sister to a miner, how siblings could be completely different colors. But she said nothing. “I think I’ll head upstairs,” she said quietly.
“You can’t stay there, Alice.”
Oh, God, she thought. Don’t make me sit on the porch with you.
“Then I’ll come—”
“At that library. You ain’t working there no more. Not with that girl.”
“What?”
She felt his words close around her like a stranglehold.
“You’ll hand in your notice. I’m not having my family aligned with Margery O’Hare’s. I don’t care what Patricia Brady thinks—she’s lost her mind along with the rest of them.” Van Cleve walked to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large glass of bourbon. “And how the heck did that girl see who was on the mine’s books, anyway? I wouldn’t put it past her to be sneaking in. I’m going to put a ban on her coming anywhere near Hoffman.”
There was a silence. And then Alice heard her voice.
“No.”
Van Cleve looked up. “What?”
“No. I’m not leaving the library. I’m not married to you, and you don’t tell me what I do.”
“You’ll do what I say! You live under my roof, young lady!”
She didn’t blink.
Mr. Van Cleve glared at her, then turned to Bennett, and waved a hand. “Bennett? Sort your woman out.”
“I’m not leaving the library.”
Mr. Van Cleve turned puce. “Do you need a slap, girl?”
The air in the room seemed to disappear. She looked at her husband. Don’t you think of laying a hand on me, she told him silently. Mr. Van Cleve’s face was taut, his breath shallow in his chest. Don’t you even think about it. Her mind raced, wondering suddenly what she would do if he actually lifted his hand to her. Should she hit back? Was there something she could use to protect herself? What would Margery do? She took in the knife on the breadboard, the poker by the range.
But Bennett looked down at his feet and swallowed. “She should stay at the library, Pa.”
“What?”
“She likes it there. She’s . . . doing a good job. Helping people and all.”
Van Cleve stared at his son. His eyes bulged out of his beet-red face, as if someone had squeezed him from the neck. “Have you lost your damned mind as well?” He stared at them both, his cheeks blown out and his knuckles white, as if braced for an explosion that wouldn’t come. Finally he threw the last of the bourbon down his throat, slammed down his glass and set off outside, the screen door bouncing on its hinges in his wake.
* * *
• • •
Bennett and Alice stood in the silent kitchen, listening to Mr. Van Cleve’s Ford Sedan starting up and roaring into the distance.
“Thank you,” she said.
He let out a long breath, and turned away. She wondered then whether something might shift. Whether the act of standing up to his father might alter whatever had gone so wrong between them. She thought of Kathleen Bligh and her husband, the way that, even as Alice read to him, Kathleen would stroke his head as she passed, or place her hand on his. The way, sick and frail as he was, Garrett would reach out for her, his hollowed face always finding even the faintest smile for his wife.
She took a step toward Bennett, wondering if she might take his hand. But, as if reading her mind, he thrust both into his pockets.
“Well, I appreciate it,” she said quietly, stepping back again. And then, when he didn’t speak, she fixed him a drink and went upstairs.
* * *
• • •
Garrett Bligh died two days later, after weeks of hovering in a strange, rasping hinterland while those who loved him tried to work out whether his lungs or his heart would give out first. The word went round the mountain, the bell tolled thirty-four times, so that everyone nearby could tell who had departed. After they had finished their day’s work the neighboring men gathered at the Bligh household, carrying good clothes in case Kathleen had none, ready to lay out, wash and dress the body, as was the local custom. Others began to build the coffin that would be lined with cotton and silk.
Word reached the Packhorse Library a day later. Margery and Alice, by tacit agreement, shared out their routes between Beth and Izzy as best they could, then set out for the house together. There was a sharp wind that, instead of being blocked by the