Chapter 21
CHAPTER
“Are you ready to open it?” Luke wiped his hands on his pants, then swiped a handkerchief over his brow.
He had replaced the box with fresh wooden supports he’d made from materials he had in the truck.
The fact that Tom had been willing to assist him while Ivy held up the light touched Elsa deeply, and she told him so.
“Ready.” Elsa had thoroughly washed her hands while the others were in the tunnel. She nodded to her roommate, and Ivy removed the sheet of India rubber that had been wrapped around the box.
Beneath the rubber was a metal box sealed around the edges.
“Pitch and turpentine,” Luke said. Using a blade, he cut through the seals and opened the box.
Nesting inside was another, this one made of teakwood and nailed shut, with more of the same sealant at the edges.
Again, Luke assisted, cutting through the seal and using a crowbar to open the lid.
“Whatever’s inside, someone went to great pains to try to keep it safe.” Elsa’s heart beat harder. A metal box protected the package from insects. The wood box protected it from the rust and corrosion that may come from the metal.
“Your turn.” Luke stepped back.
Elsa pulled on the cotton gloves she used for handling specimens and removed a package tightly wrapped in muslin, another barrier intended to combat moisture. It was the shape and weight of a large hardcover book, about nine inches wide and twelve inches long.
With care, she unwrapped the muslin and found a layer of waxed paper folded around the book.
Even Barney seemed to hold his breath.
Nerves tingling to her fingertips, she swept away the paper.
Her heart sank. The embossed cover read Field Ornithology: Manual of Instruction and a Checklist of the Birds of North America.
Deflating, Elsa held it up, turning it so the others could see.
Tom scratched his head. “That doesn’t look medieval to me.”
“No, it definitely isn’t,” Elsa confirmed. She set it back down and opened the front cover. This volume was published in 1874 by Elliott Coues. It was a rare find and would be valuable to book collectors and ornithologists, but it wasn’t what they’d all been looking for.
“I don’t understand,” Ivy said.
Elsa tried to explain. “Linus took the aviary away from Birdie to prevent her from sharing it with Danielle. One day when he was out, Birdie entered his den and found a book wrapped in waxed paper and muslin. It was nestled in the box but not nailed shut yet. She rightly guessed it was the aviary and that he was preparing it for a hiding place.”
“Wait a minute, how do you know all this?” Tom asked.
“Birdie wrote about it in a letter to Agnes soon after it happened,” Elsa told him.
“She confided in Agnes that she switched out the aviary, replacing it with a book of similar size and weight in the hopes that he would box it up and hide it before he realized what she’d done.
” She held up the field guide again. “Obviously her plan worked. Linus never had a clue what he so carefully preserved.”
Ivy shook her head. “Clever girl. So we’re no closer to finding the aviary than we ever were.”
The small flame bobbed and leaned inside the kerosene lamp, casting light and shadow over four glum faces and one dog, who was now stretched out and snoring on the floor. There was nothing more to do here.
“Thanks, everyone, for your help unearthing this.” Elsa cradled the book in one arm, ready to pack it with the rest of her things. Mr. Chapman, at least, would want to see it. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m exhausted and ready to retire for the night.”
The weight of disappointment was tempered only by the knowledge that Birdie had succeeded in fooling Linus until his dying day.
If only Birdie hadn’t fooled herself so thoroughly, too.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1926
Elsa shouldn’t have expected she would sleep well in Birdie’s bedroom. While Ivy’s soft, regular breathing continued uninterrupted, Elsa’s rest came only in snatches. The house creaked, and the wind moaned. Moonlight streamed through lace curtains, casting needlepoint patterns on the wall.
Elsa stared at the underside of the canopy above the bed and thought of the woman who had slept here, alone, her husband occupying the room across the hall. The one that once had been the nursery. Not for the first time, she wished she had known Birdie better while she still lived.
She wished she had been able to honor Birdie’s wishes and hand the aviary to the Petrovics.
Regret made a terrible bedfellow.
Eventually giving up on sleep, Elsa wiggled out of her sleeping bag to make herself ready for the day. It was just after six o’clock, nearly time for dawn. She might as well go outside. This would likely be the only sunrise she’d ever spend at Elmhurst.
Careful not to disturb Luke and Tom, who slept in the parlor, Elsa let herself out the front door and took the paved stone path into the closest copse of trees.
Dew beaded her shoes as she left the path and sat on a downed tree trunk.
Bird vocalizations were much reduced from the spring songs that attracted mates and established territories.
Still, enough made their presence known to bring a smile to Elsa’s face.
She tugged her sweater tighter around her and inhaled the sharp woodsy scent. Slowly, the indigo sky faded, and a crimson ribbon on the horizon showed between the trees. Fallen leaves carpeted the ground. Twigs snapped, and Elsa turned to find Luke approaching with one hand held behind his back.
With any luck, he’d come to surprise her with coffee, but she’d pretend not to notice for now. “Did I wake you on my way out?” she asked.
“I was already up. Mind if I join you, or do you prefer to commune with nature alone?”
“Nature is better when shared.” She patted the trunk next to her.
He paused a few feet away from her. “I brought you something. Close your eyes?”
She did so and could tell from the spicy smell of his shaving soap that he sat down beside her. Curiously, she did not smell any coffee.
She must have shivered, either from the chill in the air or from anticipation, because she felt him shift, and then he draped his jacket over her shoulders. It smelled of him and still held his warmth.
“You won’t be cold without this?” she asked.
“Nope. Here, put your arms through.”
Still not peeking, she obeyed and felt her body relax into the sudden comfort of being warm again. “Thank you. That’s so much better.”
“You’re welcome. You can open your eyes, just don’t look behind you yet, okay? First, I wanted to tell you that I took your advice. Yesterday morning I told my father what I told yours at the park about my changed perspective on salvage and restoration.”
Her eyes widened. “And?”
“And I’m glad I did. So was he. Turns out, it meant more to him to hear that than I’d ever dreamed it would. All this time, he had been feeling like the family business was holding me back from bigger and better things.”
“Oh my. Did you talk and sort that out?”
“We did talk. I’d been thinking about what you said about how you’d misinterpreted your parents for years.
I wanted to know if I’d done the same thing, so I asked questions I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Once my mother joined the conversation, things slowly fell into place.
At first, when I came to work for my father, he criticized me because, frankly, I deserved it.
I had a lot to learn, and he was too raw from grief over losing Franklin to put a nice spin on the corrections I needed. ”
“I can understand that. Did your mother shed any light on things?”
He nodded. “She suggested the critical spirit became not only a habit but also a defense against bonding with me too much. They both expected me to leave them to make a name for myself as an architect. I guess Father thought losing his second son that way wouldn’t hurt so much if we remained angry at each other most of the time. ”
Stunned, Elsa gripped his hand. “That was a big conversation. Huge!”
He chuckled. “I’m still exhausted from it. But I am so glad my parents opened up the way they did. If Mother hadn’t chimed in, I doubt Father and I would have gotten to the root of the issue. But we did, and I have you to thank for the prompt that started it. So thank you.”
Her heart leapt. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear all this.
You may not recall that the first day we met, you asked a rhetorical question about whether people could be restored the same way old buildings could be.
I think the answer is yes. People can be salvaged.
Relationships can be restored. We can save the beautiful that remains and build upon that, can’t we? ”
His response was a smile that needed no words to improve it.
“I also—I made you something. I hope you like it, and I really hope it doesn’t hurt your feelings.
My only intention with this is to give you something to remind you that you don’t ever have to walk alone.
I want to be the one you lean on, the one beside you.
But for the times when we’re apart, I’d like you to have this.
To use or just to look at if you don’t need it. ”
Elsa didn’t know whether to be touched or nervous. She landed on both at once. “So it isn’t coffee?”
He chuckled. “There will be a fresh-brewed pot waiting for us back at the house after this.”
After reaching behind the trunk they sat upon, he handed her a long vertical carving of a dozen or so chickadees stacked on top of each other with the same branch winding around it beneath their feet.
“Luke,” Elsa gasped. “It’s gorgeous. Wherever did you find such a piece?”
“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. Like life is a grand adventure, and I have all I need to enjoy it.”
Pulling her close, he dropped a kiss on her hair.