Chapter Sixteen

I SAW IN AUNT HYACINTH a moment-by-moment transformation as we worked in her library each day. It was a mammoth project, one I knew might last the length of her life, but it kept us all together, bustling around her, busy and happy. That was worth every minute, every strained muscle from moving bookshelves and nose full of dust from the upper reaches—shelves that probably hadn’t received attention in ten years.

Celia’s excitement and growing sense of purpose made my heart sing. What it would be to live with such joy and purpose each day—to rise every morning looking forward to work that would benefit an entire community, bring us into relationship with one another and use the natural gifts and inclinations we’d all been blessed with. It seemed like heaven opening to me, and that was confusing.

How could something so lovely, so inviting and welcome come to me? How could it seem that God was blessing everyone around me, allowing me to be part of this amazing gift, when He couldn’t possibly look on me with favor? I didn’t know, and I dared not look too closely for fear the gift might be taken away. Any day, Gerald could waltz through the front door, or there would be a knock, and when I opened it, his smug power would bear down on me.

In the meantime I determined to do my best for Aunt Hyacinth and the people of No Creek who might benefit from the library, and to take advice from an expression of Olney Tate’s: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. You might find the teeth are rotten or you might find them fine; it’s a gift horse just the same.”

I could tell by Reverend Willard’s longing gazes at the books and his concern for Miz Hyacinth that he wished he could be part of tearing down the old and setting up the new, but he hadn’t time. He tended the congregational needs of a full church in No Creek on Sundays and Wednesday evenings as well as a church in Ridgemont on Saturdays and Tuesday evenings—besides visiting the sick and homebound and settling local disputes. All that plus another job writing a column of sermons printed in a Charlotte newspaper kept him busy and solvent.

Aunt Hyacinth and I could lift the window most late afternoons and hear him practicing his sermons to the tombstones in the churchyard. We couldn’t hear enough to know all he said but caught the inflection in his voice, the passion of his heart. It seemed to do Aunt Hyacinth good, so daily I raised the window by her chair. Sometimes we’d share a giggle over our eavesdropping or at amusing things he said.

It was fun at the time, but later I felt guilty—as if we were being sacrilegious. And yet, when Aunt Hyacinth surprised me by telling Reverend Willard we did that, he laughed as if it was the best joke in the world and said he figured it a great compliment that we’d listened so attentively since, after all, he’d not been able to raise the dead with his preaching.

It was on a Tuesday that we finally finished organizing the adult nonfiction. Alphabetizing the fiction and setting up the children’s room would be pure pleasure after that.

“How will we let people know when to come?” Celia asked the question that had troubled me. As a newcomer I didn’t think I was the one to spread the word. And I feared, as the time drew closer, opening up Garden’s Gate to the scrutiny of strangers and the litany of questions regarding my relationship to Aunt Hyacinth and the Belvidere family that would surely come with daily visitors. How could I answer them truthfully without revealing too much, without running the risk that word of my whereabouts would somehow get back to my husband or father?

“Reverend Willard can announce it on Sunday,” Chester volunteered, which sounded like a very good idea.

“But then it just sounds like something the preacher wants us to do that’s good for us.” Celia stuck out her lower lip and pinched it. “Nobody’s likely to take to that.”

“We could post a notice at the general store. Ida Mae’s good for spreading any word we want.” Gladys flicked her dustrag across the bottom row of novels authored by writers whose names began with the letter A.

But it was Chester who came up with the idea Celia seconded and championed. “A party, like they throw after a working—that always gets people to come.”

“Clogging and Joe Earl’s fiddle—here?” Their mother frowned.

“Perhaps not, but a party,” Aunt Hyacinth mused. “A summer tea party to show off Garden’s Gate and welcome our friends to the library. That’s not a bad idea. What do you think, Grace?”

“Well, I—”

“We could show them all the books and how they’re arranged and teach them how to check them out!” Celia looked near to bursting. “I can be the librarian and sign everybody up! And lend all the books out!”

Her mother fussed, “Settle down, Celia. You’re hopping like a pogo stick. I don’t know that an invitation to view books will bring people out, Miz Hyacinth.”

“They’ll come if there’s cake!” Chester asserted. “I’ll come, if there’s cake.”

Aunt Hyacinth’s bells went off again. “Then cake there will be!”

“And lemonade for the kids and sweet tea for the grown-ups!” Celia was already making a list. “And everybody can come, right? Right, Miz Hyacinth? We can help spread the word.”

“Grace?” Aunt Hyacinth deferred.

“It sounds like a good idea—more work, but a good idea.”

“Excellent! I do think posting a notice in the general store and post office is the thing, and if Reverend Willard would make some sort of announcement and mention on Sunday that he’ll come, that would certainly bring folks out.”

“At least women with unmarried daughters,” Gladys said under her breath.

So our plans were underway, and Celia, true to her word, set about inviting everybody she knew.