new library.”
Josephine nodded in resignation. “Me, too. One small step. Then maybe the school can build a new science lab. We’re not asking for that much, are we?”
Elise saw her friend to the door and gave her a warm hug. “Thanks for all you did today. At the library. Here.”
“Anytime. Well, no. I didn’t mean it that way. We certainly don’t want another accident.”
Elise waved as Josephine drove away, then she closed the door and secured it. The house was quiet when she turned. Quiet and somehow empty. Bea was in her room, waiting to have her hair brushed. The marmalade cat was fast asleep on the couch. Echoes of their parents still could be felt in the decor that had changed little since their deaths so many years before. Yet there were times when it just wasn’t enough.
Elise drew a soft breath, braced her weary shoulders and went to tap on Bea’s door. The call for entry came without hesitation.
Bea was sitting up in bed, the wheelchair off at an angle nearby. Elise moved it in order to get the brush out of the bedside table drawer. Bea had already taken her hair down, the long, pale threads her last remaining pride. Wordlessly, Elise perched on the edge of the mattress and began the ritual that ended each sister’s day.
As usual, Bea relaxed when the long strokes with the brush began, and as usual, Elise’s mind wandered. Tonight her thoughts flew to a certain time in the day when she had sat at her desk directly opposite a vital, attractive man, and he had placed his hand over hers and told her not to worry. And for a few enchanted seconds, she hadn’t worried. All her cares had lifted as she became lost in the certainty of his voice and the look in his unusual yellow-brown eyes.
Bea moved impatiently. “Have you gone to sleep?” she demanded. “You’ve stopped brushing!”
Elise immediately shook the memory away, glad that her sister couldn’t see the warm flush that had crept into her cheeks.
* * *
AMID THE FAMILIAR surroundings of his apartment in Milwaukee, Robert Fairmont sat at his drafting table and contemplated the set of blueprints for the Tyler library. He frowned in concentration as he moved from sheet to sheet and finally to the specifications at the end. It was a good job, nothing less than he expected from Fred Dupont—which was exactly what he’d decided after reviewing the project the day before. Fred had been a good student and now he was a good practicing architect in the firm with which Robert himself was affiliated. But Robert could see where civic pride and a good artist’s instincts had eventually led to a clash with today’s fiscal reality.
He checked the papers that constituted the history of the project. First contact with the firm had come nearly three years before, at a time when matching funds from state and federal sources were much easier for small towns like Tyler to access. As those sources dried up, any number of civic projects all over the state had been put on hold.
He returned to the specifications. Yes, it truly was a beautiful job. The library would have been a building all involved could be proud of. Only now it faced the same threats as had the courthouse in Johnstown Corners and the new administration building in Bennington Falls before he had found a way to save them. Could he help the people of Tyler in the same way?
He smiled slightly to himself. The simplest solution would be to lop off the top floor of the two-story Greek Revival structure, but he doubted that the chief librarian would sit still for that. And he couldn’t blame her. Space was so cramped in the building that presently housed the library. What would be the sense of constructing a new building that gave them very little additional room? The collection wouldn’t get wet, but that was about all he could promise.
Robert moved away from the drawing board to stand at the series of wide windows that overlooked Lake Michigan. Lights were starting to twinkle along the shore as the setting sun rapidly plunged the area into night. He leaned against the thick plate glass, his shoulder registering its solidness as well as its coolness as he hummed softly in accompaniment to the delicate strains of the Mozart piano concerto that reverberated throughout the apartment. There was no one to complain if he was slightly off-key or to protest that he hummed too loudly; no one to criticize his choice of music. His features relaxed into contentment. A short time later, when the movement drew to a close, he sighed, and with reluctance allowed his thoughts to return to the events of the day.
His time in Tyler had been far different from what he’d expected. He had planned to pass a couple of hours in consultation about the library, then be on his way back to Milwaukee, about an hour’s drive away. As it turned out, most of the day had been spent in hard physical labor! Row upon row of books had needed to be moved, shelves had to be taken down, the room where the leak had occurred had had to be emptied so that repairs could be made and all surfaces properly cleaned. There hadn’t been time to do much consulting—at least, not with the chief librarian. But he had been able to pick up on the feelings of a number of his fellow workers. It seemed that the old house that had served as Tyler’s library for the past forty years had reached the point of no return. Everyone agreed it was in terrible condition and might fall down at any given moment—an exaggeration, Robert knew, but one that expressed the townspeople’s feelings succinctly. All seemed to want the new library to be built, but no one had a good idea of how to replace the funding that had been lost. Their attempts to raise additional money had barely scratched the surface of what was needed, which made their frustration easy to understand. So, too, was the desperation of the librarian, who pretended to be calm and collected in the midst of disaster, but who in reality was in a near-explosive state of worry.
Robert pushed away from the window and moved restlessly about the apartment. He was glad he had a project to think about, something to keep his mind occupied for the dog days of summer. Unlike past summers, when he had traveled, this one he had decided to spend at home. And he could already tell that his decision had been a mistake.
He moved back to the drawing table and continued to hum, both lightly and on-key, as he exchanged the plans of the Tyler library for a set of yellow tracing sheets on which he had been sketching his version of a modern-day cathedral. After securing it in place, he sat down to work. It was his whimsy that one day one of his renderings would rival the best that Europe had to offer in style, grace and innovative grandeur.
The German poet Goethe had once likened architecture to “frozen music.” That was the way Robert thought of his craft. It appealed both to the artist in him and to the engineer. The challenge was everything.
* * *
ELISE HURRIED downstairs, aware that once again she was late. For a person who prided herself on being punctual, the past few days had been a trial. There had been problems with the insurance company, with arranging an appointment for the vacuum chamber, even with the hall at Fellowship Lutheran. Somehow someone had overlooked the fact that the church hall was scheduled for use that weekend, and it had taken a number of calls, plus Elise’s own pleading intervention, to make arrangements for the planned awards dinner to be held instead at the hall belonging to the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd.
Once Elise got behind in her schedule, she seemed to stay behind. She had thought to have most things under control by this morning, only to discover that Joe Santori could come three days early to repair the ceiling of the Biography Room. And she wasn’t about to tell him not to come. The way things were progressing, a refusal could equal several weeks’ delay. So she had stayed at the library longer than planned, which made her late arriving home to prepare Bea’s lunch, which accordingly had delayed her preparation for her second meeting with Robert Fairmont.
A light film of perspiration glazed her body, the result of a too-hot shower, a too-warm house and heightened tension.
