Page 49 of Loyally, Luke
She paused, staring up at the tree. “I... I’ve always wanted to climb a tree.”
He turned toward her slowly, trying to decipher her sentence. “You’ve never climbed a tree?”
He didn’t mean to say it as bluntly as he did, but the idea of never having climbed a tree sort of stumped him. It was as common in his world as eating PB&Js. He blinked. Did she eat PB&Js?
Did they even have those in Skymar?
A rush of pink flew into her cheeks.
“Sorry, I... I’m sure there are lots of different things about Skymarian childhoods than Appalachian ones.”
“I’m certain there are, but tree climbing isn’t one of them.” She studied him a moment and then resumed their walk. “There are many things I seemed to miss that I’m only now truly realizing. In fact, I have an entire list of things I missed as a child that I’d like to do someday.”
“What happened?”
Quiet lingered, the only sounds their feet crunching the leaves scattered across the path and the voices from the village growing fainter. A bird chirped here or there. A squirrel rustled out of the way.
It was life as he liked it.
“When I was young, I had cancer for a little while.”
The declaration struck him in the gut. Cancer hit hard enough, but as a kid? The idea nearly crippled him. How helpless and scared her parents must have felt.
“There were a lot of hospital visits and medications. I had to be home-educated for a few years. And then, after all the abnormal, I had to learn how to enter back into a normal world again as a ten-year-old.” A burst of air came from her. A laugh? A sigh? “My mother became extremely protective of me because I wasn’t very strong then.”
“Fear.”
“NowI understand it, but then all I felt was that everyone else’slives had moved on in ways mine hadn’t. And since it took some time to gain back my strength and build my immune system, she continued to be overly protective to the point I felt trapped.”
“Trapped?” He watched the late afternoon sunlight bathe her face and hair in gold.
“Suffocatingly so.” She kept her gaze ahead, her expression sad. “There are... high expectations in my family, for everyone, but I felt I was coming into the fray not only at a disadvantage but attempting to free myself too, so I fought hard. As hard as I could to prove myself. In fact, it seemed I tried to do everything in complete defiance of how my parents raised me and what they wanted for my future.” She paused then and looked up at him. “I’m fighting a very different battle now. Trapped, perhaps, in a different way by a collection of horrible choices. And now I’m fighting to prove I am not who I was. That they can trust and rely on me. That I have my priorities in the right place.” Her gaze faltered. “But like you said in the building process, it trulyismuch more difficult to restore something that is broken than it is to break it.”
He took everything in. The words and the ramifications of those words. The pain lacing her voice. The desire to make things right, but most of all the hope. Hope that after all the work and good choices, she’d be able to be seen in a new way, maybe the way he was beginning to see her.
“What were some things on your list?” He followed beside her as she resumed their walk. “The things you didn’t get to try?”
Checking off a list, he could do. Fixing a broken past, well, that wasn’t his job as much as hers and God’s.
Her lips quirked, as if she recognized his detour too. “Much like the journal we found, my list is comprised of simple things. Climbing a tree.” She waved behind them to the oak they’d passed. “Having a snowball fight.”
“You’ve never had a snowball fight?”
“No.” She shook her head, orange scenting the air as she did. “Mymother was afraid to send me out in the cold and to have any of my siblings accost me with snowballs.”
“I bet you’d have a mean throw. I’ve seen you swing a hammer.”
She laughed. “You should see my painting skills. I’m rather excellent at painting.”
He tipped a brow, his gaze roaming over her face. “I can put you to work with that too. Once you stop dawdlin’ around with scrap pieces and get torealwork.”
“Real work?” Her eyes lit. “Then teach me how to lay the flooring next week?”
He narrowed his eyes as if considering. Maybe someone like her could consider someone like him. With her interior design degree, they’d make a great team, but—heat began a slow rise up his neck—he imagined they’d make an even better team off the job. “Were those the only things on your list?”
She narrowed her eyes right back at him and then chuckled. “Oh, I had other silly things like roast food over an open fire at night, swim in a lake.”
“There are plenty of lakes around here.” In fact, except for the ones that required snow, this list seemed pretty doable.
