back from her face. “I wouldn’t want to waste them. I know how desperate everyone is for reading. And that’s a long wait for some.”
“It’s no trouble.”
Kathleen’s smile wavered. “In fact, I can’t see how it’s worth you wasting your time coming all the way up here just now. To tell you the truth, I can’t hold a thought in my head and the children . . . Well, I don’t seem to have much time or energy to read to them either.”
“Don’t you worry. There are plenty of books and magazines to go round. And I’ll just leave picture books for the children. You won’t need to do anything and they can—”
“I can’t—I can’t seem to fix on much. I can’t do anything. I get up each day and I get through my chores and I feed the children and mind the animals but it all seems . . .” Her smile broke. Kathleen lowered her face into her hands and let out an audible shaky sigh. A moment passed. Her shoulders began to convulse silently and, just as Alice was wondering what to say, a low, broken howl emerged from somewhere deep within Kathleen, raw and animal. It was the most painful sound Alice had ever heard. It rose and fell on a tide of grief, and seemed to come from some place completely broken. “I miss him.” Kathleen wept, her hands pressed tightly to her face. “I just miss him. I miss him so much. I miss the feel of him and the touch of him and I miss his hair and I miss the way he used to say my name and I know he was sick for so long and that by the end he was barely a shell of himself but, oh, Lord, how am I meant to go on without him? Oh, God. Oh, God, I can’t do it. I just can’t. Oh, Miss Alice, I want my Garrett back. I just want him back.”
It was doubly shocking because, outside anger, Alice had never seen any of the local families express greater emotion than either mild disapproval or amusement. Mountain people were stoic, not given to unexpected shows of vulnerability. Which made this somehow even more unbearable. Alice leaned forward and took Kathleen in her arms, the young woman’s body racked with sobs so fierce that Alice’s own body shook with them. She placed her arms tightly around her, pulled her close and let her cry, holding her so tightly that the sadness seeping out of Kathleen became an almost tangible thing, the grief she carried a weight that settled over them both. She pressed her head to Kathleen’s, trying to lift a little of the sadness, to tell her silently that there was still beauty in this world, even if some days it took every bit of strength and obstinacy to find it. Eventually, like a wave crashing onto the shore, Kathleen’s sobs slowed, and quieted into sniffs and hiccups, leaving her to shake her head with embarrassment, and wipe at her eyes.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Alice whispered back. “Please don’t be sorry.” She took Kathleen’s hands in her own. “It’s wonderful that you got to love somebody that much.”
Kathleen raised her head then, and her swollen, red-rimmed eyes searched Alice’s. She squeezed Alice’s hands. Both were roughened from work, thin and strong. “I’m sorry,” she said again, and this time Alice understood that she meant something quite different. She held the woman’s gaze, until Kathleen finally released her hand and swiped at her tears with her flat palm, glancing over at the still sleeping children.
“My goodness. You’d best be getting on,” she said. “You got rounds to get through. Lord knows the weather’s closing in. And I’d better wake those babies or they’ll have me up half the night again.”
Alice didn’t move. “Kathleen?”
“Yes?” That desperate bright smile again, wavering, and yet determined. It seemed to take all the effort in the world.
Alice lifted the books onto her lap. “Would . . . would you like me to read to you?”
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to