The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel by Lisa Wingate Read Free Book Online

her wrist. She gasps and drops the lamp, and it falls on the carpet, the flame drowned in a wax pool. She don’t even bother to go after it, just stands there with her hands on her waist, looking up at the high shelves. There’s no ladder to get up there. The house girls probably took it to use for cleaning someplace.
    Ain’t two seconds before the cape is off that girl’s shoulders, and she’s testing the bottom shelf with one foot, and then climbing. Lucky thing she’s still in child’s skirts, just only halfway betwixt her knee and her silk slippers. She skitters her way up like a squirrel, the long hair trailing down her back making a big, fluffy tail.
    Her toe slips near the top.
    Careful, I want to say, but she rights herself and goes on, then grabs and sidesteps along the high shelves like the young boys traveling the rafters in the wagon shed.
    The muscles in her arms and legs shake from the strain, and the shelf bows under her when she gets toward the middle. It’s a single book she’s after, one that’s thick and heavy and tall. She pulls it loose and scoots it along the wobbling wood and gets herself back to the edge where it’s stronger.
    Down she comes, setting the book ahead of her, one shelf lower, one shelf lower.
    The very last time she lays that book down, it pitches like somebody’s shoved it from behind, and off it topples. Seems like forever, it goes end over end through shadows and light, then hits the floor with a smack that rattles the room and races out the door.
    There’s stirrings upstairs. “Sedd-ieeee?” Old Missus calls through the house, that screech cutting up my spine like a kitchen knife. “Seddie! Who is there? Is it you? Answer me this instant! One of you girls come lift me from this bed! Put me in my chair!”
    Feet scramble and doors open overhead. A housemaid runs down the attic steps and along the second-floor hall. Good thing Missus can’t get up from that bed on her own. Seddie’s a whole other matter, though. She’s probably grabbing the old breechloader rifle right now, fixing to lay somebody under with it.
    “Mother?” It’s Missy Lavinia’s voice comes then. What’s she doing home? Ain’t yet the end of spring term at the Melrose Female School in New Orleans. Ain’t even close.
    Juneau Jane grabs that book and she’s out the window so quick, she don’t even remember to get her cloak. She don’t close the window, either, and that’s good because I’m bound to get out of here, same way she did. Can’t leave that cloak there, though. If Missus sees it, she’ll know Tati’s stitching and come asking us about it. If I can get it and close that window, kick the travel lantern under the desk, the rest might be all right. This library’s the last place they’d think of a thief coming. Folks steal food or silver goods, not books. Any luck, a few days might pass before the candle wax on the carpet gets noticed. Even better luck, the house help will clean it up without saying a word.
    I stuff the cloak down my shirt, nudge that candle lamp with my foot, glance at the mess on the rug, think, Oh Lord. Lord, Lord, cover me over. I want to live some more years before I die. Marry a good man. Have babies. Own that land.
    The house gets like a battleground. People running, voices hollering, doors slamming, commotion all over. Hadn’t heard that much racket since the Yankee gunboats first come up the river, shelling everyplace and sending us scurrying to the woods to hide.
    Before I can get on the folding chair and jump through the window, Missy Lavinia’s right outside the library door. She’s the last one needs to find me here. That girl purely delights in the taste of trouble, which is the reason her papa sent her off to the girls’ deportment school in the first place.
    I run back through the dining room, right past every door, because Missus’s latest manservant is coming up the gallery outside. I get all the way to the butler’s pantry, but there’s