Its light is distant but it warms me still

 I’m a million miles from heaven but I’ll wait here till

 My sweetheart comes again and the glow I feel

 Is brighter than the stars above Kentucky hills

 

Alice watched, the moonshine coursing through her blood, the warmth and music making her nerves sing, and felt something give inside her, something she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge to herself, something primal to do with love and loss and loneliness. She looked at Margery, whose expression had relaxed, lost in her own private reverie, and thought of Beth’s comments about a man Margery never discussed. Perhaps conscious she was being watched, Margery turned to her and smiled, and Alice realized, with horror, that tears were sliding, unchecked down her cheeks.

Margery’s raised eyebrows were a silent question.

Just a little homesick, Alice answered. It was the truth, she thought. She just wasn’t sure she had yet been to the place she was homesick for.

 

* * *

 

• • •

Margery took her elbow and they stepped outside into the dusk, hopping down into the paddock where the horses grazed peacefully by the fence, oblivious to the noise inside.

Margery handed Alice her handkerchief. “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 a good deal of joy.” She raised an eyebrow and smiled. “And not just me either.”

Alice blinked. She couldn’t imagine prizing joy out of her current situation, no matter how hard she tried.

“Good evening, ladies.”

The two women turned to see Fred Guisler walking down the path toward them, an oil lamp in his hand. “Sounds like quite a party.”

Alice hesitated, and thrust the book abruptly back at Margery. “I—I don’t think so.”

“It’s just facts, Alice. Nothing more than that.”

Alice walked briskly past her back to the library. “I can manage this by myself. Thank you.” She half ran back up the steps, the door slamming as she entered.

Fred stopped when he reached Margery. She noted the faint disappointment in his expression. “Something I said?”

“Not even halfway close, Fred,” she said, and placed a hand on his arm. “But why don’t you come on in and join us? Aside from a few extra bristles on that chin of yours, you’re pretty much an honorary librarian yourself.”