The Giver of Stars

14

Riding all winter, a librarian would wrap up so heavily it was hard to remember what she looked like underneath: two vests, a flannel shirt, a thick sweater and a jacket with maybe a scarf or two over the top – that was the daily uniform up in the mountains, perhaps with a pair of man’s thick leather gloves over her own, a hat rammed low as she could get it, and another scarf pulled high over her nose, so that her breath might bounce back and warm her skin a little. At home, she’d strip off reluctantly, revealing only the swiftest slice of bare skin to the elements between shedding undergarments and sliding, shivering, under her blankets. Aside from cloth-washing, a woman working for the Packhorse Library could go for weeks without seeing her body much at all.

Alice was still locked into her own private battle with the Van Cleves although, thankfully, they seemed to have gone quiet for now. She could most often be found in the woods behind the cabin practising with Fred’s old gun, the crack and zing of bullets hitting tin cans echoing through the still air.

Izzy could be seen only in glimpses, trailing her mother miserably around town. And there were only intermittent appearances from Beth, the one person who could be relied on to notice these things, or joke about them, and she was mostly preoccupied with her arm and what she could and couldn’t do. So nobody observed that Margery had put on a little weight, or thought to comment upon it. Sven, who knew Marge’s body like he knew his own, understood the fluctuations that occurred in the female form and enjoyed all of them equally, and was a wise enough man not to say anything.

Margery herself had become accustomed to being bone-tired, trying to double up on routes, fighting every day to convince the disbelievers of the importance of stories, of facts, of knowledge. But this and the constant air of foreboding left her struggling 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.