Specifically, George Sanderson, founder of the library in 1872.
Upon his death in 1904, he left the library his extensive collection of books and archives, a Steinway baby grand piano and a dozen straw hats made at one of the small mills he’d owned in the valley. The last Sanderson had vacated Knights Bridge during the Depression, when the family mills were demolished ahead of the damming of the Swift River for Quabbin. Homes, businesses, barns, fences, trees—everything in the valley went. Even graves were moved to a new cemetery on the southern end of the reservoir.
Old George’s portrait still hung above the fireplace in the library’s main room. He was handsome and stern-looking, not exactly the sort Phoebe imagined would encourage story hours for small children. As she headed up the sunlit brick walk, she heard squeals of laughter through the open front window, where the children’s section was located.
Her five-year-old nephew, Aidan, Maggie’s younger son, pressed his face against the window screen. “Hey, Aunt Phoebe!”
“Aidan Sloan, do not poke that screen,” she said firmly, picking up her pace.
He giggled and disappeared from sight.
Phoebe ran up the steps and went inside, welcoming the cool, solid wood-paneled interior, hardly changed since the library was built to George Sanderson’s specifications. The main room included a small stage, the piano tucked on one end. Before Phoebe’s arrival as director, the library had seldom used the stage and the trustees had complained about the “wasted space.” With careful planning, she’d gained their support and found the money to launch a modest concert series, with musicians who didn’t expect more than a few dozen in the audience, and opened up the stage for art and garden shows. It was where the library would hold its vintage fashion show in less than two weeks.
We make use of all that we have.
That was Phoebe’s motto for the library as well as her own life. Why moan about what she didn’t have when so much was right within her grasp?
Her older nephew, Tyler, almost seven, was sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor in front of the stage with a book about raptors in his lap. “Aunt Phoebe, did you know that raptors have three eyelids?”
“In fact, I did, Tyler.” She laughed. “You’d be surprised at what a librarian knows. Would you like to see a raptor’s eyelids sometime?”
He nodded eagerly.
“We’ll have to figure that out, then. Right now, though, let’s go in with the other kids.”
“I want to stay here.”
Tyler—as redheaded as his mother—preferred to read a book on his own than to be read to, especially with his squirming younger brother. Phoebe put out a hand, but he ignored it and stood up on his own. He shuffled past her into the children’s section, his head down, shoulders slumped, as if she’d asked him to walk the plank.
He and Aidan would be tired after spending most of the day with Elly O’Dunn, their energetic maternal grandmother. She’d taken the afternoon off from her job at the town offices to look after the boys while Maggie catered a lunch and then met with Olivia at Carriage Hill. Phoebe, her mother and her two youngest sisters were doing what they could to help Maggie as she managed two young boys and a catering business on her own, without Brandon Sloan, her adrenaline-junkie carpenter husband. Phoebe didn’t have all the details, but she knew Brandon’s construction work in Boston had been on-and-off at best the past year or so. It had to have put a strain on his marriage. He had a tendency to take off into the mountains or up the coast when things got tough, instead of talking.
Brandon was the third of six Sloan siblings—five brothers and a sister. His family owned a successful construction business in Knights Bridge and would welcome him back, but returning to his hometown would signal defeat in his eyes. Phoebe had known him since nursery school. He’d wanted out of Knights Bridge at ten. Then he and Maggie fell for each other as teenagers and married in college. Almost no one in town had believed their marriage would last. Phoebe had hoped it would, because they were so much in love.
She sighed. She could be such an idiotic romantic. Hadn’t she learned by now?
She gathered the dozen boys and girls onto a round, dark red rug. They came quickly to order, even her nephews. They were reading Beatrix Potter and had just started The Tale of Peter Rabbit, their last book of the summer, and they couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.