The Search The Secrets of Crittenden Cou - By Shelley Shepard Gray Page 0,47

for weeks after that.”

“What did they do there?”

“They helped me walk. I’m afraid that’s when I became a difficult patient.” He’d been frustrated with both his stamina and the pain that had rarely seemed to ebb. “Since then, I’ve had a long recovery at home.” He frowned as he straightened his leg. “It’s still not completely back to normal. That’s why I was able to come out here. Mose needed help, and I wasn’t given permission to get back to work in the field.”

“Will your leg ever be completely healed?” She blurted the question, realizing almost immediately that she was prying too much. “Sorry. It’s none of my business . . .”

Luke reached out and pressed his palm on the back of her hand. His touch, so warm and sure, stilled her worries.

Just for a moment.

“Don’t ever apologize for being concerned, Frannie,” he said softly. Then, as if their contact had never happened, he removed his hand and spoke. “Actually, your question is one hardly anyone ever wants to ask.” He rubbed his head, the short hair sticking up as he did. “They’re afraid of the answer, I guess.”

“Is there an answer?”

He nodded. “The short answer is that it will probably never be completely back to how it was.”

“And the long answer?”

“The long one? It’s that I’ll be able to go back to work. Eventually, I’ll learn to adjust. I won’t be the same, but maybe I don’t need it to be, you know?”

He was right. Life was all about learning to adjust, to make do with less or more.

He continued. “Being injured like this taught me to be more accepting of my faults. Going through rehab, when I could only do five or seven reps of an exercise at a time, it was easy to pretend that I used to be strong.”

“I’m sure you were.”

He grinned. “I might have been able to do twenty repetitions of a weight. Not fifty. Sometimes, I would kid myself.” Looking sheepish again, he said, “For a while there, you would have thought that I could run a three-minute mile. The fact was, I never was a great runner, but I did take my leg for granted. Being in a wheelchair and on crutches for weeks and weeks made me realize that my leg is a great tool to get me from one place to the next. And if it’s scarred and sore and not quite what it was, it’s okay.”

“Sounds like life,” she murmured.

“Like life?” His brow quirked.

“You know,” she explained. “How we’re all born perfect but then things happen. You get cut in the kitchen . . .”

“Or shot in the leg,” he finished. “I never thought about it like that, but yeah, maybe you’re right. Things do happen.”

“Even when we don’t want them to.”

“It’s tempting to paint the past as perfect. But I don’t think it ever was.”

Frannie was struck by his words, more than he probably could ever imagine. Because what he’d said was how she’d felt about Perry and his death.

Somehow, she’d started pretending that things before he’d gone missing were wonderful.

They hadn’t been.

She’d been scared. In fact, once he was gone, she’d thought he’d made good on his promise to move away. She’d been relieved he was out of her life.

“Is every investigation like this, Luke?”

“Is every investigation like what?”

“Painful and scary? Raw? Sometimes, it feels as if you’ve taken my skin and peeled it back.”

“To an extent, I think pain occurs every time peoples’ lives are studied with a fine-tooth comb. However, in my experience, no two investigations are ever the same. There are motives behind every crime—and usually all motivations are personal.”

“I know revealing secrets is painful.”

His eyes flashed, and right then and there, she saw everything he was thinking—well, what he’d let her see.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “Some murders didn’t take much detective work. Pretty much everyone had seen it coming. Or we had an eyewitness.”

“Ah.”

“But what I’m trying to say is that most times, I’ve found the killer, cuffed him, and sent him to jail. I did the paperwork, and let the prosecutors take over. The only time they needed me was on the witness stand. And then I’d give my testimony, feeling like I was doing something good—putting someone dangerous off the streets. But I never really thought about what the murder had done to the community.”

“Why not?”

“I had too much to do. There’s a lot of violence in Cincinnati. If I spent as long on every case as I have