“You must be thirsty,” Alice protested.
Isabelle’s mouth tightened. Margery regarded her steadily. Finally, she reached out with a handkerchief, rubbed the neck of the water bottle, then handed it to Isabelle, with only the faintest eye-roll at Alice.
Isabelle raised it to her lips, closing her eyes as she drank. She handed back the bottle, pulled a small lace handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her forehead. “It is awfully warm today,” she conceded.
“Yup. And no place on earth better than the cool of the mountains.” Margery strode down to the creek and refilled her bottle, screwing the lid back on tightly. “Give me and Patch two weeks, Miss Brady, and I promise you, legs or no, you won’t want to be anywhere else in Kentucky.”
Isabelle looked unconvinced. The women ate their apples in silence, fed the horses and Charley the cores, then mounted again. This time, Alice noted, Isabelle scrambled up by herself without complaint. She rode behind her for a while, watching.
“You liked the children.” Alice rode up next to her as they started on the track to the side of a long green field. Margery was some distance ahead, singing to herself, or perhaps to the mule—it was often hard to tell.
“I’m sorry?”
“You looked happier. At the school.” Alice smiled tentatively. “I thought you might have enjoyed that part of today.”
Isabelle’s face clouded. She gathered up her reins and half turned away.
“I’m sorry, Miss Brady,” said Alice, after a moment. “My husband tells me I speak without thinking. I’ve obviously done it again. I didn’t mean to be . . . intrusive or rude. Forgive me.”
She pulled her horse back so that she was once again behind Isabelle Brady. She cursed herself silently, wondering whether she would ever be able to find the right balance with these people. Isabelle plainly didn’t want to communicate at all. She thought of Peggy’s clique of young women, most of whom she only recognized in town because they scowled at her. She thought of Annie, who, half the time, looked at her as if she’d stolen something. Margery was the only one who didn’t make her feel like an alien. And she, to be fair, was a little odd herself.
They had gone another half-mile when Isabelle turned her head so that she was looking over her shoulder. “It’s Izzy,” she said.
“Izzy?”
“My name. People I like call me Izzy.”
Alice barely had time to digest this when the girl spoke again. “And I smiled because . . . it was the first time.”
Alice leaned forward, trying to make out the words. The girl spoke so quietly.
“First time for what? Riding in the mountains?”
“No.” Izzy straightened up a little. “The first time I’ve been in a school and nobody was laughing at me for my leg.”
* * *
• • •
You think she’ll come back?”
Margery and Alice sat on the top step of the stoop, batting away flies and watching heat rise off the shimmering road. The horses had been washed and set loose in the pasture and the two women were drinking coffee, stretching creaking limbs and trying to summon the energy to check and enter the days’ books in the ledger.
“Hard to say. She don’t seem to like it much.”
Alice had to admit she was probably right. She watched as a panting dog walked along the road, then lowered itself wearily into the shade of a nearby log store.
“Not like you.”
Alice looked up at her. “Me?”
“You’re like a prisoner sprung from jail most mornings.” Margery sipped her coffee and gazed out at the road. “I sometimes think you love these mountains as much as I do.”
Alice kicked at a pebble with her heel. “I think I might like them better than anywhere on earth. I just feel . . . more myself up here.”
Margery glanced at her and smiled conspiratorially. “This is what people don’t see, wrapped up in their cities, with the noise and the smoke, and their tiny boxes for houses. Up there you can breathe. You can’t hear the town talking and talking. No eyes on you, ’cept God’s. It’s just you and the trees and the birds and the river and the sky and freedom . . . Out there, it’s good for the soul.”
A prisoner sprung from jail. Sometimes Alice wondered if Margery knew more about her life with the Van Cleves than she let on. She was dragged from her thoughts by a blaring horn. Bennett was driving his father’s motor-car toward the library. He shuddered to an abrupt halt, so that the dog leaped up, its tail between its legs. He was waving at her, his smile wide and uncomplicated. She couldn’t help but smile back: he was as handsome as a movie star on a cigarette card.
“Alice! . . . Miss O’Hare,” he said, catching sight of her.
“Mr. Van Cleve,” Margery answered.
“Came to fetch you home. Thought we might take that picnic you were talking about.”
Alice blinked. “Really?”
“Got a couple of problems with the coal tipple that won’t be fixed until tomorrow and Pa’s in the office trying to sort it out. So I flew home and got Annie to do us a picnic. Thought I’d race you back in the car and you can get changed and we’ll head straight out while it’s still light. Pa says we can have this old girl all evening.”
Alice stood up, delighted. Then her face fell. “Oh, Bennett, I can’t. We haven’t entered the books or sorted them and we’re so behind. We’ve only just finished the horses.”
“You go,” said Margery.
“But that’s not fair on you. Not with Beth gone and Izzy disappearing as soon as we got back.”
Margery waved a hand.
“But—”
“Go on now. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Alice glanced at her to check that she meant it, then gathered up her things and whooped as she raced down the steps. “I probably smell like a cowboy again,” she warned, as she climbed into the passenger side and kissed her husband’s cheek.
He grinned. “Why do you think I’ve got the top open?” He reversed into a speedy three-point turn, causing the dust to fly up in the road, and Alice squealed as they roared toward home.
* * *
• • •
He was not a mule prone to exaggerated shows of temper or high emotion, but Margery rode Charley home at a slow walk. He had worked hard and she was in no hurry. She sighed, thinking of the day. A flighty Englishwoman who knew nothing of the area, whom the mountain people might not trust, and would probably be pulled away by that braying blowhard Mr. Van Cleve, and a girl who could barely walk, couldn’t ride and didn’t want to be there. Beth worked when she could but her family would need her for the harvest during much of September. Hardly the most auspicious start to a traveling library. She wasn’t sure how long any of them would last.