Mrs. Fay and Miss Burnett

Lyrics

[Intro]
Mrs. Fay. And Miss Burnett.
Two names on the summer air, carried on a breeze from the common.

[Verse 1]
I saw the new school from the carriage, Mrs. Fay.
Eighteen sixty-six.
The year is still new.
I could smell the fresh-cut pine from the road, a sharp and hopeful scent.
A gift like a mountain, you and your husband Samuel.
A whole building, pulled right from the ground, for the boys.
A cornerstone, solid and square.
Your name, Elizabeth W. Fay, etched for all the years to see.

[Chorus]
And this is how a town is made, isn't it?
In gestures grand and gestures small.
One gives the land, the brick, the deed, the future hammered into the walls.
One gives the quiet, lamplit hours.
Mrs. Fay and Miss Burnett.
We are weaving different threads into the same town.

[Verse 2]
And me? I am still just Miss Burnett.
Here at Deerfoot Farm, the air is thick with my father's vanilla.
A sweet, invisible dust from Boston that settles on everything.
I hear the rustle of my own silk skirts on the library floor.
Polished wood.
My mother's project. My quiet work.
Placing a book into a waiting hand.
A different kind of foundation.

[Chorus]
Because this is how a town is made, isn't it?
In gestures grand and gestures small.
One gives the land, the brick, the deed, the future hammered into the walls.
One gives the quiet, lamplit hours.
Mrs. Fay and Miss Burnett.
We are weaving different threads into the same town.

[Bridge]
I will be married soon.
The year is coming, eighteen seventy-two.
My name will change, my life will change.
I'll become Mrs. Guild.
But today, I saw your carriage pass the library.
We didn't speak.
I think you saw me through the window and you nodded.
You build futures for boys I'll never know.
I am stacking stories for girls who are not yet born.
A different kind of inheritance.

[Outro]
The far-off sound of a school bell.
The scent of old paper and vanilla.
Your name on the stone, Elizabeth.
Mine, just a whisper in the stacks, on a title page.
A different thread.
For now.