“How are you feeling this morning?”
I grimaced a little as I stretched my neck. “Like I want to get out of here.”
George smiled. “The nurse outside said the doctor would be in with your release papers in a few minutes.”
I nodded, looking over to where George had placed the package. “What’s that?”
“I’m not sure. The woman at the nurse’s station said it was dropped off for you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Huh.” Picking it up, I noticed that only my name was written on the front. It felt so light, I wondered if anything was even in it.
Setting it on my lap, I untied the string and took off the brown wrapping. There was a plain white box inside, and I removed the lid carefully. Sitting on top of the white tissue paper inside was a folded piece of paper. I opened it, reading the line once and then again.
To Gabriel, finder of beauty, rescuer of souls.
My heart started beating faster as I put the note aside and pulled out the extra tissue paper to finally reveal what had been placed carefully inside a nest of cotton.
I let out a strangled gasp as I lifted out Lady Eloise of the Daffodil Fields, marveling as I turned her in my hands, studying every side. She had been painstakingly put back together, piece by piece, sliver by sliver, so that she was now whole again, though not perfect. Tiny cracks and small missing pieces appeared everywhere from her toes to her hair, but somehow, ah, somehow, she was even more beautiful.
Ellie. God, Ellie.
I set the doll back down in the soft nest and picked the note back up, my eyes moving over every loop and curve of the handwriting. Ellie’s handwriting. I’d never seen it before, but now I knew what it looked like, and I studied it greedily, desperate for another small piece of her I hadn’t had until now.
“Ellie?” George asked quietly.
I only nodded. After a minute I looked up at him. “What if she doesn’t come back, George?”
George’s eyes were filled with a pained sympathy. He paused for so long, I wasn’t sure if he would answer my question. But finally he said, “Then I guess you have to find meaning in the ones who stayed.”
A gut-wrenching sadness overwhelmed me, the overpowering love I still had for Ellie rushing forward to mix with the myriad of emotions from the last twenty-four hours. I wanted more than just the doll. I wanted her. I missed her smiles, her kindness, her inner beauty, her intelligent mind, her soft skin, her body molded to my body each night. Having gone without it for so long, and then to have had it back so briefly, I missed being touched. Her touch. And in that moment, not having her right there with me felt too painful to endure.
I put my head in my hands as George gripped my shoulder and his comforting presence steadied my heart. And I cried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It’s now or never. Aim for the heart.
Shadow, the Baron of Wishbone
Plunge it deep.
Gambit, the Duke of Thieves
With all your strength, my love.
Lemon Fair, the Queen of Meringue
I believe in you. Be brave. For me. For us.
Lady Eloise of the Daffodil Fields
GABRIEL
April was a whirlwind of interviews and ceremonies. I only did one major TV network interview, and that was with Wyatt and his parents. The fear in Wyatt’s eyes had disappeared, and he looked like a different kid than the one I’d first seen in that basement what now seemed like a million years ago. He had a strong will. He’d be okay. And if he needed someone to talk to, I’d always be available.
There were a few dinners held in town for me, and I looked at them as opportunities to make a new start with the people of Morlea. I was embarrassed to be regaled as a hero, but I went anyway and after they were over, I was glad I had.
Still, it was nice when things quieted down and I was able to get back to the simple life I enjoyed.
Dominic surprised me one day with a small black puppy he said he’d found wandering around the quarry, obviously abandoned by someone. I didn’t believe his story—he thought I was lonely and was trying to provide me some companionship. “You don’t have to take him,” he said. “I just thought I’d offer. It’s your choice.”
I smiled at his need to be overly cautious when it came to trying to guide me or my life in any capacity. I appreciated that he recognized how overbearing he’d been in the past and the problems it’d caused in our relationship, but I also knew he had brought the puppy over because he cared about me. “Hey Dom, you don’t have to walk on eggshells around me. I’ll let you know if you need to back off, okay?”
He nodded, huffing out a thin laugh. “Yeah, okay.”
I gave my attention back to the puppy, who was looking between Dom and me, waiting to find out if he had a new home. I supposed I could use a friend. So I took the small, sad-eyed dog and named him Dusty.
I was out back repairing a break in my fence one blue-skied spring day when Dusty started barking his high-pitched puppy bark. I stood up slowly, taking my baseball cap off and smoothing my sweaty hair back before replacing my cap.
Dusty was chasing a butterfly nearby, romping and jumping through the daffodils that grew in the field behind my yard. For a minute, I let the moment soak into my skin—the strange mixture of loss I carried inside and the peacefulness of a puppy scampering in a field of yellow. How extraordinary life could be: so filled with glorious beauty and heartrending despair. And so often swirled together so that you couldn’t separate the two.
Dusty suddenly lost interest in the butterfly and started running in the other direction.
I turned to see Eloise walking toward me from the front of the house.
My heart skipped a beat and my breath stuttered as I froze, unblinking, as if she might be a vision, a dream that would disappear into a wisp of smoke and drift away if I closed my eyes for even a moment.
But no, she was real, and she was smiling as she came closer, holding a bag of some sort on one arm, and a small box tied with string in the other, wearing a flowered sundress that swayed around her calves as she walked. Her hair—all that beautiful, chameleon hair—was down and curling in front of her breasts and down her back. The sun was shining on it, and I had a brief flash of the very first time I’d seen her under the stage lights. The color of her hair had reminded me of a bottle of honey sitting on a windowsill, and I thought the same thing now. Only this time there was something in her eyes that I’d never seen there before—a sort of calm steadiness in her gaze.
“Hi,” I breathed when she stopped in front of me. I took off my cap and, without looking, tossed it in the general direction of where my toolbox sat on the ground. My eyes roamed Ellie’s face, drinking her in, my heart racing at the unexpectedness of this, of her.
“Hi,” she said. She smiled nervously, sweetly as she held up what I now saw was a vinyl cooler and a pie box. “I made you dinner. Pesto pasta with chicken. And I baked you a pie—lemon meringue.” Her smile grew. “It only took me two tries before I got it perfect. You were right, I can do lots of things if I try hard enough.” She bit at her lip. “Sometimes it’s the second try that really sticks.”
Hopeful joy rose up in my chest, and I let out a small laugh, nodding. “Yeah.”
Dusty came charging up to her, wagging his tail and barking happily at her feet. She set the cooler on a patch of grass, putting the pie box on top of it. She laughed and bent down, taking Dusty’s face in her hands and scratching his chin. “Well, hi there. Who are you?”