Lizzie clambered off the sofa, careful not to disturb her mother more than she had to.
“Ma?” Clay approached the sofa. “We know it wasn’t the fizzy.”
Lily opened one eye. “Do you?”
“You don’t have to pretend it was. Maybe you shouldn’t have spent so much time with Mr. Shepard. Couldn’t have been easy for you.”
“Lizzie was there.”
Hannah asked, “I don’t think that matters much. Was he unkind, hurtful?”
“No, Hannah. He was a gentleman.”
Hannah blew out a breath that ruffled the fine hair at her mother’s temple. “I am very glad to hear it. I hoped he would be.”
Lily saw an opening there to mention the noble profile but she let it pass. There would be other opportunities. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been out of the house all of an afternoon.” She mocked herself with a small smile. “I don’t think I’ll do that again for a while.”
Clay said, “But it’s good, isn’t it, to go out?”
“Mm. Maybe.”
Ham and Lizzie returned just then. There was a tug-of-war for the compress until Hannah snatched it from them and laid it gently across Lily’s brow. “I’ll start dinner, Ma. There’s soup, and I can make biscuits. I’ll be careful with the stove.”
“All right, but call if you need me.” Lily eyed Clay. “Don’t you have chores to do and somewhere to be?”
“I don’t have to go see Mr. Shepard.”
“You do. He’s expecting you, and I’ll be just fine. Hannah’s making dinner, and Ham and Lizzie will keep me company.”
Clay was reluctant to leave, but in a battle of wills, she would always win. She was strong in ways he wondered if he would ever be.
•••
Roen opened the door to Clay exactly an hour after he’d seen students fleeing the schoolhouse. “Let me get my maps. We’re going to work at the library.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll wait right here.”
Roen hesitated. “Did you get something to eat after school?”
“No. But it’s all right. Hannah’s warming soup and making biscuits. She’ll keep some back for me to have when I get home.”
“There’s a jar of sugar cookies in the kitchen that my housekeeper left with me.” Martha Rushton was also Ben and Ridley’s housekeeper, and they were generous to share her time and her cookies. “Go on. Help yourself while I get what I need.”
Clay’s pockets were stuffed with cookies when they met up again on the porch. Roen noticed the dusting of sugar around the boy’s mouth and the bulge in his cheeks and figured he was filling up now and taking the rest home. He gave one of the rolled maps to Clay and carried the other two under his arm. “Careful you don’t crease that. I like a smooth map.”
“Yes, sir.” The words were mushy, confirming the mouthful of cookies.
Smiling, Roen clapped Clay lightly between his shoulder blades. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
The library was a nondescript but generously sized wooden frame building situated on Main Street between the leather goods store and Maxwell Wayne’s bakery. According to Amanda Springer, the money to erect the library was an early gift to the town from its founder, the father of the current owner of the Twin Star Ranch, Thaddeus Frost, and the grandfather of the owner of the neighboring property, which had yet to be named, Remington Frost. There was some connection there to the sheriff, but Jim Springer pulled his wife away before she expounded on that theme. Roen had never asked about it, and no one else had offered the information without invitation.
Some of the floor-to-ceiling shelves inside the library sagged under the weight of the books, but when Roen looked around, he could see that even after so many years, filling all the shelves was still a work in progress. Books wereexpensive, and lending them out shortened their life expectancy. It was one of the reasons dime novel adventures were still so popular. Stacks of them required very little space.
Roen nodded to the librarian as he paused at the front desk. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Clay do the same. “Where is the best place to unroll these maps so we can study them? It’s Miss Fletcher, isn’t it? I’m Roen Shepard with Northeast Rail.”
Miss Dorothea Fletcher offered an awkward smile while she patted her walnut-colored hair, ostensibly to make certain the pins were holding it in place. She flushed when she discovered her missing spectacles were nesting there, and the flush deepened when the earpieces tangled in her hair as she tried to remove them, making the pins superfluous. She left them to sit crookedly on her head and held out a hand to Roen. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Shepard. Of course I know who you are. I was at the town meeting for your presentation.”
Roen took her hand, gave it a gentle shake, and released it. “You know Clay.”
