each morning to lift her head from the pillow. The cold was etched into her after months of snow, and the long hours outside had left her permanently, ravenously hungry. So a woman could be excused for not noticing the things that other women might have picked up on faster, or if she did, for sweeping the thought away under the larger pile of things she had to worry about.
But there is always a point at which these things become impossible to ignore. One night in late February Margery told Sven not to stop by, adding with deceptive casualness that she had a few things to catch up on. She helped Sophia with the last of the books, waved Alice off into the snowy night and bolted the door behind her until it was just her alone in the little library. The log burner still glowed warm because Fred, God bless him, had packed it full of logs before he, too, disappeared to eat, his mind full of someone else entirely. She sat in the chair, her thoughts hanging low around her head in the darkness, until eventually she stood, pulled a heavy textbook from the shelf and flicked through the pages until she found what she was looking for. Brow furrowed, she scanned the information carefully. She absorbed it, then counted off her fingers: one, two, three, four, five, five and a half.
And then she did it a second time.
Despite what people might have thought around Lee County about Margery O’Hare’s family, about the kind of woman she must surely be, given where she came from, she was not prone to cursing. Now, however, she cursed softly once, twice, and let her head sink silently into her hands.
FIFTEEN
The small town bankers, grocers, editors and lawyers, the police, the sheriff, if not the government, were all apparently subservient to the money and corporate masters of the area. It was their compulsion, if possibly not always their desire, to stand well with these who had the power to cause them material or personal difficulties.
• THEODORE DREISER, introduction to Harlan Miners Speak
Three families who wouldn’t let me so much as hand over a book unless we read Bible stories, one slammed door up by those new houses near Hoffman, but Mrs. Cotter seems to have come back round now she understands we’re not trying to tempt her into the ways of the flesh, and Doreen Abney says can she have the magazine with the recipe for the rabbit pie as she forgot to write it out two weeks ago.” Kathleen’s saddlebag landed with a thump on the desk. She turned to look at Alice and rubbed dirt from her hands.
“Oh, and Mr. Van Cleve stopped me in the street to tell me that we were an abomination and the sooner we were gone from this town the better.”
“I’ll show him abomination,” said Beth, darkly.
By mid-March, Beth had returned to work full-time, but nobody had the heart to tell Kathleen she was no longer needed. Mrs. Brady, who was a fair woman if a little unbending, had declined to draw Izzy’s wage since she had gone, and Margery simply handed the little brown paper packet directly to Kathleen. It was something of a relief, as she had been paying her out of her own pocket with the few savings she had hidden since her father’s death. Twice Kathleen’s mother-in-law had come by the library to bring her children and show them what their mama was engaged in, her voice filled with pride. The children were great favorites among the women, who showed them the newest books and let them sit on the mule, and there was something in Kathleen’s slow smile, and the genuine warmth of her mother-in-law toward her, that made everyone feel a little better.
Realizing Alice would not be budged on the matter of returning to the house, Mr. Van Cleve had taken a new tack, insisting she leave town, that she wasn’t wanted here, pulling alongside her in his car as she headed out on her early-morning rounds so that Spirit’s eyes rolled white and she pranced sideways to get away from the man bellowing out of the driver’s window.
“You got no way to support yourself. And that library’s going to be finished in a matter of weeks. I’ve heard it from the governor’s office himself. You ain’t coming back to the house, then you’d best find somewhere else. Somewhere back in England.”
She had learned to ride with her face