Page 129 of Charlotte

Her eyes burned at once.

“Cecil.”

The name changed him. She saw it each time. A small opening. A surrender no other word could manage.

“I need to tell you the rest first,” he said.

“All right.”

“My hand will not mend back to what it was.”

“I know.”

“No. You know the shape of it.” His gaze dropped to the deformed fingers. “You do not know the whole of it. The winter took two fingers, and the cold damaged more than the skin. Some days the grip is poor. Some days the pain runs clear up the arm. My shoulder never settled right after the shed came down, and if I turn too fast, my balance reminds me of it.”

“I can still work,” he said. “But not the way I did. Not always. Not the heaviest loads. Not every climb. Not every haul. I kept thinking if I could not do the work I did before, I had become less of a man.”

“You are not less.”

“I am beginning to believe that.” He drew a breath. “Tucker Montgomery offered to keep me on. Most men would have just let me go. What use is a cripple who can’t hold a saw?”

“Tucker?”

“Aye. Counting logs. Marking loads. Keeping tallies for shipments. Supply ledgers for the camp. Measurements. The sort of work I used to notice while pretending not to notice.”

Lottie stared at him.

His mouth pulled slightly. “I know numbers better than most men think.”

“I am not surprised.”

“You are not?”

“You designed three windows for a library that did not yet have walls.”

That almost brought a smile.

“Mr. Montgomery says the camps lose more money to poor counting than to bad weather.”

“He sounds correct.”

“He is.” Cecil looked toward the lake. “It would be steadier. Less dangerous. I would still be at the camp for a few days here and there. Still near timber. I won’t break myself to prove I can still do what I did before.”

Lottie could barely breathe around the hope rising in her. “Do you want that?”

“I want to stop hating the work that keeps me alive because it is not the work that nearly killed me.”

That was so honest, it hurt. She set the basket carefully at her feet.

“There is something else,” she said.

His eyes returned to hers.

“The letters.”

His face closed halfway, then opened again by effort.

Good, she thought. Stay.