Took Laina on the Buford farm call today. She’s old enough now, though I had to lift her to see into the stall. She asked the best questions. She’s going to be a vet someday. I know it the way I know my own name.
The words swam. I blinked hard but that made the tears spill over.
Me following in his footsteps wasn’t about the building I worked in but the way I cared for life, whether it was a farm mare or a clatterwing.
Only now could I finally see that.
“Laina?” My mother touched my arm.
I sat there with my father’s journal open on my lap while my chest cracked apart.
Brovish walked over and sat on my other side, his arm going around my shoulders.
I pressed my face into his shirt and cried for a father who’d known me before I knew myself. I’d spent the past three yearstrying to fill the space he’d left. And I cried for the journal hidden away by a mother who’d needed it more than me.
My mother’s hand covered mine where it gripped the journal. Tears trickled down her face.
Eventually my breathing steadied. I wiped my face with the back of my hand.
“He was right,” I said, my voice rough. “I did become a vet.”
“He usually was about the things that mattered,” my mother said.
I closed the journal, holding it against my chest.
Brovish’s hand found mine, his fingers weaving our hands together. His thumb traced a slow circle across my knuckles, his version ofbreathe.
I did.
We were heading back toward the main building when a familiar metallic chime cut through the air.
Cooper landed on the fence near where we stood, his feathers catching the afternoon light. His healed wing tucked against his body with no hesitation, as if it had never been broken at all.
He’d been free for months, but he’d come back because he wanted to.
The wing that mends teaches the bird new ways of flying.
Healing changes a person. You don’t return to what you were. You become something that knows both falling and flight.
Cooper tilted his head, studying me with one pale blue eye. He made a soft chiming sound, the one that meant he was content.
Brovish knew exactly what this moment meant to me.
My mother watched us both.
“You’ve found your place,” she said.
“I have.”
“Good.” She smiled, and this time it came through without effort. “That’s all I wanted. For you to find somewhere you could grow instead of just survive.”
After we’d finished for the day, we walked home together. My mother stayed for dinner, sitting at our table while Brovish cooked. She asked about the next school visit we had scheduled for a week from now, whether Willa had adjusted to the front desk position, and if Drogar had finally stopped trying to teach the mossnibbles to steal on command. The kind of questions a mother asked when she wanted to know about her daughter’s life.
By the time she was ready to drive back to my cottage where she was staying, the careful distance between us had narrowed even further.
I hugged her goodbye out front. Longer this time, less afraid that too much contact would break something fragile.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asked, studying my face.
