When she was safely on the floor Emily said, “I thought you’d be diving right into your library books. Did you forget Matthew’s coming?”
The cloth dipped vigorously in and out of a bucket of water.
“Mom—”
“I didn’t forget.” Julia climbed back up on the chair.
Emily tilted her head to see which books were piled on the floor. Prehistory and ancient history. Under a book about cave paintings were a few about the origins of the universe. Those moved back and forth regularly, from the very first spots on the shelf to a much later shelf devoted to modern science. Julia wanted her collection to run seamlessly from the beginning of all things to the present moment in time. The fact that the present moment kept changing complicated her plans. What Emily found endearing was that right near the end, included with all the books in the world that her mother thought were important, were the children’s books Liz had written and illustrated.
A bit of a mess didn’t matter. Emily wanted to help Matthew with his research, not impress him with her spotless house. It would be easier to remember that if he didn’t have such an air of spotlessness himself.
“Here he is.” She felt a lift when she saw his car, another when he stepped out of it.
Hamish got to him before she did and circled him warily. Matthew wore khakis again and another button-up shirt, a more casual cotton blend, as if he was noticing how people dressed in Three Creeks. Maybe by the time he left he’d be wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“Another hot day,” he said.
“And in spite of it, my mother’s climbing up and down scrubbing book shelves.”
“Will it disturb her if we look around?”
“If you imagine a boundary around the books on the floor and don’t cross it, we’ll be fine.” They walked to the kitchen door. “Our house was built a generation later than the Rutherford place. I’m not sure how a tour will help.”
“I thought I’d soak up atmosphere.”
“You mean the overall creaky floor, crooked walls, cobwebs in the corners kind of atmosphere?”
He smiled. “If that’s what you’ve got, that’s what I want.”
Emily began in the living room, pointing out the characteristic lumber used at the turn of the twentieth century, three-inch strips of tongue-and-groove British Columbia fir, applied vertically up to a chair rail and then horizontally. Julia continued to clean, ignoring them.
“My great-great-grandfather gave parcels of land to his children when they married, so there’s the original place, where my grandmother lives now, and a number of houses built for his children, like this one. My cousin Tom and his wife Pam built their own place.” She smiled. “Pam didn’t want to soak up anybody else’s atmosphere.”
“The houses have changed hands by inheritance?”
“Sometimes. My grandfather bought this place for my parents from his sister—”
She stopped. Matthew had stepped over Julia’s barricade of books and was examining the shelves. After one startled glance, Julia stared at the book she was holding as if she had discovered mold on its cover.
He tapped the backboard. “That’s not the original wall, is it? It’s not tongue-and-groove like the rest of the room.”
It was the one thing Emily had asked—that he respect her mother’s territory. “My dad built it out a few inches. He didn’t think the books should rest against an exterior wall.”
“Temperature differences, condensation?”
“You never know.”
“He did a nice job.” Matthew ran his hand along one of the shelves, feeling the tight joins where boards met boards, apparently unaware of the disapproval around him. “Beautiful work.”
Stiffly, Julia said, “My husband liked carpentry.”
“I can tell. Did he put the shelves up in stages as your library grew?”
“All at once.”
“He had an idea you’d want a whole room full, did he? The wood’s dried out. He must have done this a long time ago.”
“In the fall of 1980. After harvest.”
“It’s a big job for one person to take care of a library of this size.”
“You can’t let the books get dusty,” Julia said. She still frowned at the one she was holding, but she had relaxed. “You have to give them air. You have to think of an organization that makes sense, so you can find what you want.”
She began telling Matthew about Sinuhe, everything she had learned at the library that morning. That it came from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom—1940 to 1640 BC—and that Sinuhe was the name of a clerk or scribe who worked in a palace. He ran away during a time of conflict and spent his life in exile until his king pardoned him. It was pieced together from papyrus fragments and carvings on limestone, and it was the reason she was cleaning—to make room for a section of books about and from Egypt.
When she ran out of facts she fell silent. Matthew rejoined Emily outside the circle of books.
“I wasn’t supposed to do that, was I?” he said quietly, as if he had just remembered.
“No, you weren’t.”
“I’m sorry. Your place is so different from where I grew up. My parents liked the minimalist look.”
She opened a door at the front of the house. “This is our only minimalist room. It’s supposed to be for company.”
There was no bed, no furniture at all. Only rows of plastic containers piled on top of one another. “I call it the Robb-Moore Archives,” she said lightly. “At first my mother kept everything in cardboard boxes, but I put my foot down. Too much of a fire hazard.”
Matthew read one label out loud. “‘School reports, Emily Moore, grade 1-12.’ It’s nice that your mom wants to keep things like that.”
“Until you know she wants to keep everything. Wedding invitations, birth announcements, obituaries, sales receipts, newspaper clippings, livestock papers…”
His gaze deepened into something she was afraid might be sympathy so she quickly added, “Which is great. If someone in your family had done this you could have found all the information you wanted in a day.”
She backed out of the room and led Matthew to the second floor. When they reached the landing he looked at a trapdoor overhead.
“An attic?”
“Not a usable one. It’s rafters and cobwebs and the odd chipmunk.”
He reached up, easily touching the door. “Could I take a look?”
“There’s nothing to see. The last time I opened it a whole load of dust and little bits of gray insulation poured down.” She wasn’t going to clean that up again.
Her mother’s room was on the left, with the door shut, and hers was on the right, overlooking the front yard. As soon as she saw her twin bed, so childish under the window, she wished they had stayed downstairs.
Matthew took in the bed, the photos of horses and dogs, the books and the dolls and teddy bears left out because they had too much personality to be shut away. “Cozy.”
“But not very helpful for your family history.” “It is. Really. I’ve never been in a big old prairie house.” He knocked on the wall. “When I was a kid I always thought old houses had secret rooms.”
“Hang on.” Emily pushed her bed to one side. Behind