“Thank you, Mr. Guisler.” She took a sip. “I feel rather silly.”

“Fred. Please. And don’t feel bad. Not for a minute. We’ve all been caught.”

She stood for a moment, feeling suddenly awkward. She was in a strange man’s home, wearing his dead wife’s dress. She didn’t know what to do with her limbs. A roar went up somewhere in town and she winced. “Oh, goodness. I haven’t just made your lovely house smell awful but you’ve missed Tex Lafayette. I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing. I couldn’t leave you, looking so . . .”

“Skunks, eh!” she said brightly, and his concerned expression didn’t shift, as if he knew that the smell was not the thing that had so upset her.

“Still! You can probably catch the rest of it if we head back now,” she said. She had started to gabble. “I mean, it looks like he’ll be singing a while. You were quite right. He’s very good. Not that I heard a huge amount, what with one thing and another, but I can see why he’s so popular. The crowd does seem to love him.”

“Alice—”

“Goodness. Look at the time. I’d better head back.” She walked past him toward the door, her head down. “You should absolutely head back to the show. I’ll walk home. It’s no distance.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“In case of more skunks?” Her laugh was high and brittle. Her voice didn’t even sound like her own. “Honestly, Mr. Guisler—Fred—you’ve been so very kind already and I don’t want to put you to more trouble. Really. I don’t—”

“I’ll take you,” he said firmly. He took his jacket from the back of a chair, then removed a small blanket from another and placed it around her shoulders. “It’s turned chilly out there.”

They stepped onto the porch. Alice was suddenly acutely aware of Frederick Guisler, of the way he had of observing her, as if looking through whatever she said or did to assess its true purpose. It was oddly discomfiting. She half stumbled down the porch steps and he reached out a hand to steady her. She clutched at it, then immediately let go as if she’d been stung.

Please don’t say anything else, she said silently. Her cheeks were aflame again, her thoughts a jumble. But when she glanced up he wasn’t looking at her.

“Was that door like that when we came in?” He was staring at the back of the library. The door, which had been open a sliver to allow in the sound of the music, was now wide open. A series of distant, irregular thumps came from within. He stood very still, then turned to Alice, his ease of the previous minutes gone. “Stay there.”

He strode swiftly back inside and then, a moment later, emerged from his house with a large double-barreled rifle. Alice stepped back as he passed, watching as he walked toward the library. Then, unable to stop herself, she followed a few paces behind, her feet silent on the grass as she tiptoed down the back path.

* * *

• • •

What seems to be the problem here, boys?”

Frederick Guisler stood in the doorway. Behind him Alice, her heart in her mouth, could just make out the scattered books on the floor, an overturned chair. There were two, no, three young men in the library, dressed in jeans and shirts. One held a beer bottle, and another an armful of books, which, as Fred stood there, he dropped with a kind of provocative deliberation. She could just make out Sophia standing, rigid, in the corner, her gaze fixed on some indeterminate point on the floor.

“You got a colored in your library.” The boy’s voice held a nasal whine and was slurred with drink.

“Yup. And I’m standing here trying to work out what business that is of yours.”

“This is for white folks. She shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah.” The other two young men, emboldened by beer, jeered back at him.

“Do you run this library now?” Fred’s voice was icy. It held a tone she had never heard before.

“I ain’t—”

“I said, do you run this library, Chet Mitchell?”

The boy’s eyes slid sideways, as if the sound of his own name had reminded him of the potential for consequences. “No.”

“Then I suggest you leave. All three of you. Before this gun slips in my hand and I do something I regret.”

“You threatening me over a colored?”

“I’m telling you what happens when a man finds three drunk fools on his property. And if you like, just as easy, I’ll tell you what happens if a man finds they don’t leave as soon as he tells them. Pretty sure you ain’t going to like it, though.”

“I don’t see why you’re sticking up for her. You got a thing fer Brownie here?”

Quick as a flash, Fred had the boy by the throat, pinned against the wall with a white-knuckled fist. Alice ducked backward, her breath in her throat. “Don’t push me, Mitchell.”

The boy swallowed, raised his palms. “It was just a joke,” he choked. “Can’t take a joke now, Mr. Guisler?”

“I don’t see anyone else laughing. Now git.” Fred dropped the boy, whose knees buckled. He rubbed at his throat, shot a nervous look at his friends and then, when Fred took a step forward, ducked out through the back door. Alice, her heart pounding, stepped back as the three stumbled out, adjusting their clothes with a mute bravado, then walked in silence back down the grit path. Their courage returned when they were out of easy range.

“You got a thing for Brownie, Frederick Guisler? That why your wife left?”

“You can’t shoot for shit anyway. I seen you hunting!”

Alice thought she might be sick. She leaned on the back wall of the library, a fine sweat prickling on her back, her heart rate only easing when she could just make them out disappearing around the corner. She could hear Fred inside, picking up books and placing them on the table.

“I’m so sorry, Miss Sophia. I should have come back sooner.”

“Not at all. It’s my own fault for leaving the door open.”

Alice made her way slowly up the steps. Sophia, on the surface, looked unperturbed. She stooped, picking up books and checking them for damage, dusting their surfaces and tutting at the torn labels. But when Fred turned away to adjust a shelf that had been shoved from its moorings, she saw Sophia’s hand reach out to the desk for support, her knuckles tightening momentarily on its edge. Alice stepped in and, without a word, began tidying, too. The scrapbooks that Sophia had so carefully been putting together had been ripped to pieces in front of her. The carefully mended books were newly torn and hurled across the room, loose pages still fluttering around the interior.