I slip out of my dress and into a peacock-blue skirt and gold blouse. Roarke carries our bags out to his car while I hug Lissa good-bye.
“I’m glad that you told me,” she says. “And I’m relieved that at least from here on out, you’ll be safe. I know Roarke will make sure of that. You’re lucky to have found him.”
“I know.”
“It’s good that you won’t have to do this on your own.”
“Like you did?”
“Well, I made a clean break of it. It’ll be different for you. You’ll have a baby. It will be ratings gold. Mother won’t just let you go.”
“The way she let you?”
Lissa smirks, “I didn’t give her any choice.”
“You mean you blackmailed her.”
“Maybe just a little. It was hard, though. Final. There was no going back. It will be easier the way you’re doing it.”
“Which way is that?”
Lissa shrugs. “The way that doesn’t start a war.”
Her expression almost makes me believe that she knows about the library and what I’ve hidden there. Suddenly I want to tell her everything. I want to tell Roarke as well, but something stops me. I get into the car, but as Roarke starts the engine, I roll down the window and lean out.
“Wouldn’t you say that a war has already been started?”
Lissa smiles sadly but does not answer. She raises a hand, and then we pull away. At first Roarke drives without saying anything, but after a few minutes, he looks at me out of the corner of his eye to say, “I guess that means you found out what you needed to know. Now what are you going to do about it?”
* * *
—————
I know our cameras are at the campaign event, but they are lost in a sea of reporters. There is a split second when I think I catch sight of the familiar face of one of the show’s own cameramen, but then he is swallowed again by the roiling crowd. All the major networks are there and I recognize a few of the local bloggers. Ellory Lester has delivered what he promised. Mother, on the other hand, has produced a good number of Daddy’s congregation. If things go according to plan, Caleb may very well have an audience even larger than anything Mother and Daddy have ever been able to wrangle on their own.
Roarke and I wait on the bandstand with the rest of the family for Caleb’s car to arrive. Ellory finishes handing out American flags and then, making note of the approaching Land Rover, signals that it is time to raise these flags and cheer. The car stops and Caleb climbs out of the front passenger-side door, waves, and turns to help Naomi and the kids out of the back. Naomi and Millicent are in dresses cut from matching blue fabric, while little Nate wears a white shirt and a red bow tie. Caleb carries him with one arm and waves with the other and together they walk toward the stage. Once there, Caleb hands Nathan to Matty and kisses Naomi on the cheek before taking the podium.
I try to tune out Caleb’s speech, but it is punctuated by buzzwords like America and freedom and religious liberty. Every time he says one of these, the crowd cheers and I jump a little, startled by their fervor, by the frenzy with which they whip their little flags in the air above their heads. A breeze picks up, and though it is gentle, it is still enough to make the red, white, and blue balloon arch beneath which Caleb is standing begin to sway to and fro. The crowd subconsciously mimics the movement and soon they are undulating with a force as primal as the tide.
Caleb gestures to Naomi, says something about soul mates, and Roarke reaches out and takes my hand and squeezes it as if to say that this will all be over soon. And it is. Caleb announces his run for the House of Representatives and Bennett Tull himself takes the stage. I look around and try to see where he could have been hiding. He shakes hands with Caleb as if to pass the torch and smiles and waves at his constituents, his hand raised like that of a conductor calling for a crescendo, and he is immediately rewarded as the chorus of shouts begins to swell.
All at once it is finished and we are being swept away. Ellory Lester had been clear on the matter of not allowing interviews. He wants all of the airtime to be filled up by this scene alone and its meticulously crafted optics. If the networks want to supplement with other shots, they will have to use footage from Six for Hicks, preferably episodes when Caleb was younger. Ellory says that voters are naturally drawn to those candidates they know best, and what better way to drive home how well all of America knows Caleb than to highlight what are essentially home videos of him growing up before their very eyes?
Caleb shakes the hands that are thrust at him across the temporary barricade. Naomi stands a little to the side with Nathan on her hip while Millicent hangs on to her skirt. Naomi’s teeth look bright against her dark red lipstick and I wonder if she had them whitened especially for the occasion and whether she told the dentist to bill the campaign.
The strobe of the cameras flash like bursts of summer lightning and Millie begins to wail. Naomi, unable to put Nathan down, pats Millie’s head in a way I’m sure is meant to be soothing, but the girl only cries harder. Naomi looks toward Caleb for help, but his back is turned. Heedless of either his wife or his daughter, Caleb moves farther away, reaching his hand into the fray, pumping his arm furiously up and down. He shakes the hand of a girl not much older than I am and she looks up at him eagerly. Keeping ahold of her hand, Caleb leans forward so that his lips practically brush her hair as he whispers something to her. The girl blushes. Naomi takes a step toward him then, opens her mouth as if to call his name, but Roarke is already there, lifting up Millicent and rescuing her, spinning her around so that his body blocks the flashing of the lights, asking her about the ribbons in her hair. Naomi smiles at me in a conspiratorial way, a look I find difficult to interpret, but perhaps she only means it to be kind.
Finally, Ellory signals to Caleb that it is time to leave; Caleb gives the crowd one last wave and we all turn to walk away. Then, apparently unaware of Ellory Lester’s instructions regarding interviews, the press surges forward to follow us toward the parked cars. Bulky microphones crowd my peripheral vision while reporters call out my brother’s name. Roarke charges ahead of them and deposits Millicent safely in her car seat and closes the door to block her from the noise. Naomi gives his hand a grateful squeeze and circles around to the other side of the car and begins the task of buckling Nathan in as well. I feel a hand on my arm and I stop and turn.
“We have no comments at this time, thank you,” Mother says brusquely, but it is only Libby and so I grab hold of Mother’s hand and pull her to a stop as well, cutting my palm on one of her enormous rings.
“Mother,” I say to placate her, “this is Liberty Bell. I’m sure you recognize her from our chats together. I think a formal introduction is long overdue.”
Mother collects herself quickly and switches on her smile. “Of course. Liberty, my dear, thank you for all you’ve done for our darling Esther Anne. We couldn’t be more pleased with your coverage. You’ve really given the public a chance to get to know these two young people and the lovely man and woman they are growing up to be.”
“The pleasure has been all mine, Mrs. Hicks, I assure you.”
Libby is jostled slightly to one side and Mother pulls my hand to lead me toward the cars. I free it and impulsively reach forward and take Libby’s pad of paper out from between her fingers. There is a pen nestled in the spiral binding and I extract it and open the pad to a blank page near the back. I should have done this when we were alone. Maybe I should have done this the first time we met, but for some reason I was not sure I was brave enough until right now. Something about being up in front of all those people, about the way they clapped and cheered with so much hope, and the way that girl looked at my brother, has finally made this necessary.
“You were asking about the old church at the edge of town, the one with the big stone cross out front. I felt so foolish, but when you asked who had founded the p
arish, my mind went completely blank. I was nervous about the interview, I guess.”
Libby tilts her head to one side and her eyebrows come together. Lissa used to look at me like that when I asked her questions she thought I should know the answer to, like where to find Germany on a map or what French-kissing meant.
“Essie, I have no idea—” Libby begins, but I cut her off.
I need her to understand. If I wait until I am home and can text her again, then she will have already left town—and in any case, I am nearly certain that I will lose my nerve. It’s happened before. So I continue, “That’s really no excuse, though, since Daddy talks about him all the time. He’s something of a hero to our family. Before he raised that church’s steeple, these parts were entirely populated by heathens, native and European alike. It’s completely inexcusable for me to forget his name.”
“You must be talking about Livingston James,” Mother says. “Esther Anne, we’ve surely taught you better than that.”
I giggle and shake my head from side to side and write down the name.
“Reverend James, of course. How silly of me. My nerves must really be on edge. Mother, don’t you think Libby would find the story of the congregation’s early years inspiring? Perhaps Daddy has some old diaries or books that she could borrow?”
Mother’s smile stiffens and she squeezes my hand so tightly that I wince. However pleased she might be with the Liberty Bell who exists on camera to promote her daughter’s sham engagement, she does not want her in our house.
Mother glances down at her watch and says, “The library’s open for a few more hours. They have an entire section of historic documents that deal with the founding of the town. You should stop in and browse through them before you begin your journey home.”
“It all sounds very interesting,” Libby says, her words coming out slowly.
“Oh, it’s fascinating,” I agree. “Mother is right. You should absolutely stop in to the library before you get on your way. There are so many wonderful stories from that time, stories that give us a better idea of who we are today. But none of them compare, I think, with really looking into the Reverend James’s eyes. They speak volumes, Daddy always said. They open up a doorway to the past.”
I am not sure whether I have said too much or not enough, but it’s hard to think with Mother watching. Now her tug on my hand becomes more insistent and I can only hope Libby has understood as I am guided to our family’s car. Daddy’s secretary, Liam, is beside him at the wheel so Mother climbs in back with me. The last thing that I see is Libby’s look of confusion. Then Liam pulls the car away.
Liberty
The press mills about for another five minutes and then the crowd thins and I’m left standing in the park almost entirely on my own. I see Margot signaling frantically for my attention from the doorway of the coffee shop where she was hiding during Caleb Hicks’s campaign event. I look down toward the corner where Essie’s SUV disappeared and give my head a shake as if to clear the fog that has settled over my brain. Mama used to send me out to the barn any time my brain got full up like that. Go get a wiggle on, Mama would say, and don’t come back until you’ve simmered down. Being around the horses could usually be depended on to settle my thoughts. I shake my head again. It doesn’t help.
Reluctantly I cross the street and join Margot at a window table at Common Grounds. I order an espresso, but I know the caffeine won’t help me unravel what it was that Essie was trying to say.
“What’s wrong?” Margot asks.
I screw up my face, uncertain how to answer.
“I don’t know,” I finally admit. “Essie introduced me to her mother and then started talking about a Reverend James who lived here back when the town was first founded.”
“Livingston James?”
“How did you know that?”
“Because the library is named after him. We drove by it. You can actually see it if you lean this way.”
Margot gestures out the window.
“It can’t be,” I tell Margot.
“What can’t be?”
“The library can’t be named after Livingston James. If it were, then Essie never would have forgotten his name.”
“Maybe she’s not the library type,” Margot begins. I raise my eyebrows and then she says, “All right. I take it back. She should have known his name. What of it?”
“It didn’t make sense for her to bring him up at all. She said I had asked her about his old church, but I never did. And then after Mrs. Hicks reminded Essie of his name, she told me to go to the library to read about the congregation.”
“Who did?”
“Well, Mrs. Hicks first, but then Essie seconded it. She said something about how the past informs who it is that we become, which seemed fairly cliché even for her.”
“Maybe there’s something there that she wants you to see. If so, she couldn’t really come right out and say so, not with her mother standing there.”
I take another sip of my coffee and feel my teeth begin to buzz. One of the baristas drops a glass and there is a round of applause. She takes an embarrassed bow and begins to sweep up the shards. There is more good-natured laughing and all at once the caffeine kicks in and the faces of the strangers all around me seem to be melting. I blink and force myself to focus.
“We should go,” I say and I scrape my chair across the floor and bump the table as I stand.
“We should go,” Margot repeats. “Where exactly are we going?”
The bell above the door jingles as I push our way outside and point.
“To the Livingston James Library, of course.”
* * *
—————
When we enter the library, a stern-looking woman holding court from behind the circulation desk purses her lips with obvious displeasure as we approach. Amazingly she holds this expression without moving even a single muscle while I explain that we would like to learn more about the library’s namesake, Livingston James. At this she sighs, as if it is all too much for her, and I get the sense that she is less offended by having to walk us to the back reading room than she is by the notion that there are still people in this world for whom Livingston James is not a household name.
We walk at a snail’s pace to the foot of a spiral staircase and she wags her finger to indicate that we should climb. She does not follow.
We are halfway up before she calls after us, “There are some lovely portraits as well as the usual manuscripts, but the bust is my favorite. It was donated to the library by my great-great-grandfather nearly a hundred and fifty years ago.”
There are a few snake hisses from the reading room, but these cease as soon as the patrons realize who it is they’re shushing. I look up in time to see Margot disappear onto the second floor and I begin to climb up after her.
The room the stairs lead to is circular. We are in the squat tower at the far end of the building that is the only part of the library that rises above ground level. Dark wood beams cross the empty space above our heads, fanning out of the center of the tower like the spokes of a wheel. From the center of the wheel hangs an electric chandelier. Just beneath this there is a large glass case of maps that look to have been hand drawn onto yellowed parchment, with blue ink for rivers, black for roads, and green for the pastures and the wild tangle of forest that encircled the settlement to the north, south, east, and west.
Margot taps a fingernail against the flat surface of the glass. “It wasn’t much. Just the church and a handful of farms and houses.”
That’s all there is in the town where I grew up even now. “It’s the same with everything,” I say. “It starts out small and either grows or dies out.”
“What do you think we’re supposed to learn from this?”
“I still don’t know.”
I move over to the shelves, first pulling volumes out
at random and leafing through them, then running my fingers along the bookcases themselves, though what I’m looking for, I can’t say. I find a family Bible, the once blank leaves at the very front and back filled with names and dates of births and deaths and baptisms. I open the book to the center, half expecting to find the pages hollowed out in an homage to The Shawshank Redemption with some message from Essie hidden inside. But there’s only Ezekiel, the part about milk and honey, the pages so thin they are nearly translucent.
Behind me I can hear Margot open a book so old its spine practically creaks in protest. She sets it on a table and turns its pages.
“This one is written by Rosalind James, the reverend’s wife. It looks like a diary of the first five years of the church.”
I cross the room to join her at the table and say, “Those would qualify as the early years, I guess. Essie mentioned something about that.”
Margot leafs through the leather-bound volume and then plants a finger to pin the curling pages down.
“Here,” she says.
We both read Rosalind’s description of the first Christmas pageant, the children dressed in real lamb’s wool, the angel with her crown of straw. The congregation shared a simple supper in the rectory after the service and Rosalind was particularly proud of how her pudding had turned out.
“There’s nothing here,” I say after staring at the pages so long my eyes begin to tear. “She can’t possibly expect us to read everything from the first few years after the church was founded, can she?”
The Book of Essie Page 18