Kathleen raised her head then, and her swollen, red-rimmed eyes searched Alice’s. She squeezed Alice’s hands. Both were roughened from work, thin and strong. “I’m sorry,” she said again, and this time Alice understood that she meant something quite different. She held the woman’s gaze, until Kathleen finally released her hand and swiped at her tears with her flat palm, glancing over at the still sleeping children.

“My goodness. You’d best be getting on,” she said. “You got rounds to get through. Lord knows the weather’s closing in. And I’d better wake those babies or they’ll have me up half the night again.”

Alice didn’t move. “Kathleen?”

“Yes?” That desperate bright smile again, wavering, and yet determined. It seemed to take all the effort in the world.

Alice lifted the books onto her lap. “Would . . . would you like me to read to you?”

    For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

Two women sat in a tiny cabin on the side of a vast mountain as the sky slowly darkened, and inside the lamps sent out slivers of gold light through the gaps in the wide oak planks. One read, her voice quiet and precise, and the other sat, her stockinged feet tucked up under her on the chair, her head resting against her open palm, lost in her thoughts. Time passed slowly, and neither of them minded and the children, when they stirred awake, didn’t cry but sat quietly and listened, even though they understood barely any of what was said. An hour later, the two women stood at the door and, almost on an impulse, hugged each other tightly.

They wished each other a happy Christmas, and both smiled wryly, knowing that for each this year it would simply have to be endured. “Better days,” said Kathleen.

“Yes,” Alice responded. “Better days.” And with this thought she wrapped her scarf high around her neck so that it covered everything but her eyes, mounted the little brown and white horse and made her way back toward the town.

* * *

• • •

Perhaps it was boredom at being stuck in the house after years of long days spent in the camaraderie of other miners, but William liked Sophia to tell him what had been happening at the library each day. He knew all about Margery’s anonymous letters to the families of North Ridge, who had asked for which books at the cabin, about Mr. Frederick’s deepening crush on Miss Alice, and the way she herself seemed to be hardening, like ice creeping across water, as that fool Bennett Van Cleve gave her the cold shoulder and killed her love for him, inch by frozen inch.

“You think he’s one of them?” William asked. “Men that like . . . other men?”

“Who knows? Far as I can see that boy don’t love nothin’ but his own reflection. Wouldn’t surprise me if he stands in front of the mirror and kisses the glass every day ’stead of his wife,” she retorted, and enjoyed the rare sight of her brother bent double with laughter.

But she was darned if she could find much to tell him today. Alice had sat down heavily on the little cane chair in the corner and her shoulders had slumped like she was carrying the weight of the world.

Tiredness doesn’t make you look like that. When they were physically tired the girls would pull off their boots and bitch and moan and rub at their eyes and laugh at each other. Alice just sat there, still as a stone, her thoughts somewhere far from the little cabin. Fred saw it. Sophia saw he was pretty much itching to walk over there, and comfort her, but instead he just went to his coffee jug and brewed her a fresh mug, placing it in front of her so gently that it took her a moment even to register that he had done it. Your heart would break to see how tender he looked at her.

“You okay, girl?” Sophia said quietly, when Fred had stepped out for more logs.

She didn’t speak for a moment, then wiped at her eyes with the heel of her palms. “I’m fine, Sophia. Thank you.” She looked over her shoulder at the door. “Plenty worse off than me, right?” She said it like it was something she’d repeated to herself many times. She said it like she was trying to convince herself of it.

“Ain’t that always the truth,” Sophia responded.

But then there was Margery. She’d blown in like a whirlwind as dusk fell, her eyes wild, her coat dusted with snow and a strange, brittle energy about her so that she forgot to close the door and Sophia had to scold her to remind her that it was still blizzarding outside, and was she actually born in a barn?

“Anyone been by here?” she said. The girl’s face was as white as if she’d seen a haint.

“Who you expecting?”

“Nobody,” she said quickly. Her hands were trembling, but it wasn’t from cold.

Sophia put down her book. “You okay, Miss Margery? You don’t seem yourself.”

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” She peered out of the door, like she was waiting for something.

Sophia eyed her bag. “You want to give me those books, so I can enter them?”

Margery didn’t answer, her attention still fixed on the door, so Sophia got up and pulled them out herself, placing them on the desk one by one. “Mack Maguire and the Indian Chief? Weren’t you taking this to the Stone sisters up at Arnott’s Ridge?”

Margery’s head spun round. “What? Oh. Yes. I’ll . . . I’ll take them tomorrow.”

“Ridge not passable?”

“No.”

“Then how you going to get up there tomorrow? It’s still snowing.”

Margery seemed temporarily lost for words. “I’ll . . . I’ll work it out.”

“Where’s Little Women? You signed that out too, remember?”

She was behaving real strange. And then, she told William, Mr. Frederick came in and it got really odd.

“Fred, you got any spare guns?”

He put a basket of logs down by the burner. “Guns? What you want guns for, Marge?”

“I just thought . . . I thought maybe it would be good for the girls to learn to shoot. To take a firearm on the remote routes. In case.” She blinked twice. “Of snakes.”

“In winter?”

“Bears, then.”

“Hibernating. ’Sides, nobody’s seen a bear in these mountains for five, ten years. You know that as well as I do.”

Sophia looked incredulous. “You think Mrs. Brady’s gonna let her little girl carry a gun? You’re meant to be carrying books, Marge, not guns. You think some family who don’t trust you girls anyways gonna trust you more if you turn up at their house with a hunting rifle strapped to your back?”