“I started carving it for you the evening after you taught Danielle about the chickadees.”
“You made this. For me?” She couldn’t imagine the number of hours it had taken.
“Yes, chickadee, for you. Stand up, I want to see how the height is.”
Not quite understanding what he meant, she stood anyway.Still seated on the tree, he gently took her hand and placed it upon the round head of the bird at the top.
Understanding dawned as she let the opposite end rest on the ground. This was more than a stick repurposed into a work of art. It was a cane.
She was twenty-six years old, and he had given her a cane.
He had good reason to.
Tears fell faster than she could wipe them away. She felt herself teetering on the brink of something monumental. With the barest nudge, she could go either way. She could fall headlong into self-pity for the way her body refused to fully heal. Or she could, as she had done last night in the tunnel, accept that she had limitations but refuse the shame that had accompanied them in the past. She could rejoice that this man cared so well for her exactly the way she was. She could decide to enjoy this beautiful gift and the giver who valued her enough to make it.
“Elsa, what is it? What are you thinking right now?”
“It’s perfect.” She swiped the back of her hand over her cheek once more. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Funny, I’ve been thinking the same thing about you.” Luke pulled her near.
When his arms came around her waist, she let the cane go and rested her hands on his shoulders. “Thank you, Luke.” But what she felt for him was too big to be contained in those three syllables.
Without pausing to think about it, she pressed a kiss to the scar on his brow, then another to the scar on his cheek, lingering there while her stomach flipped in a somersault. His hand cupped the back of her neck, his fingers buried in her wavy hair.
She kissed the scar on his chin and felt him smile, his arm around her waist tightening. In the next moment, his lips were on hers in a kiss that left no room for doubting his feelings for her.
In fact, it left her nearly breathless. She leaned back.
“Are you okay?” he asked, alarm in his eyes and voice. “Did I—was that bad for your lungs?”
“Are you kidding?” She laughed. “It’s not my lungs. It’s my heart.”
His frown deepened. “Is it okay?”
“Never better.”
Luke’s frown slowly curled into a smile instead. “Good.”
“Very.” Sunrise slanted through the branches in golden shafts that speared through mist rising from the ground. Elsa picked up the cane again. “It really is remarkable.”
“Do you think you’ll use it?”
“Yes,” she decided. “I will, and proudly, too. I’ll use it now, on my way to get that coffee you mentioned. We have some time before we need to head back, and there’s a little more work to do.”
Luke rose and walked beside her while she tested out the cane. “Will you be ready to leave in an hour or so?”
“In a manner of speaking.” She allowed herself a sigh and told him what he surely already knew. She’d been so sure they’d found the aviary last night and so deeply disappointed to find she was wrong.
“It was still a worthy discovery, proving that Birdie was telling Agnes the truth with those letters. That has to mean the aviary is still around here, likely closer than we think.”
After so much searching, the notion failed to bring comfort.
Luke motioned to the cane she’d been using along the path. “How does that feel?”
Eager to set her disappointment aside, she smiled up at him. “Like I’m on a field expedition,” she answered, every word true. “Using this makes me feel like I’m on a grand adventure. Likelifeis a grand adventure, and I have all I need to enjoy it.”
Pulling her close, he dropped a kiss on her hair.
