the crystal knob, he threw the door open and stumbled inside, finally allowing his artificial leg to touch the floor.
Sinking onto his cot, he rolled up his pant leg and wrenched the form from its leather bracing. For a moment, he considered throwing it out the window. But he hated using crutches even more than he hated the wooden leg. Releasing an agonized groan, he pummeled the mattress with the turned length of wood, swinging it with all of his strength again and again and again.
Finally, exhausted, he flopped sideways on the mattress with the peg leg still gripped in his trembling hand. He stared at the empty pant leg dangling over the edge of the bed. Odd how his body still believed a foot was there. A dull, never-ending ache did its best to convince him he had two feet instead of just one. But the drooping fabric exposed the truth—he was a cripple.
Closing his eyes, he whispered a halting prayer. “God, I know I can’t grow another leg, but please . . . please . . . won’t You help me feel complete?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Alice-Marie slipped her hand through Libby’s elbow as they neared the women’s dormitory. “Elisabet, may I call you Libby, the way Bennett and Pete do?”
Libby, only half listening, shrugged.
“Very well. Libby from now on.” She drew back on Libby’s arm, bringing her to a halt. “Libby, please don’t be sad. This is an exciting time! Just think”—she leaned close, her blue eyes sparkling— “tomorrow our classes start, we can begin pledging to Kappa Kappa Gamma and make many friends, the college campus is swarming with handsome men, there are no parents with watchful eyes keeping us from having fun . . .” Alice-Marie’s voice rose in enthusiasm with each addition to her list of reasons to celebrate.
Libby heaved a huge sigh.
Alice-Marie shook her head. “. . . and yet you sigh and frown.” She took hold of Libby’s hands. “Tell me—why are you so downhearted?”
With a little huff of impatience, Libby pulled free of Alice-Marie’s light grasp. “Didn’t you see Petey’s face when he left the dining hall? I . . . I hurt him.” She swallowed, regret a bitter taste on her tongue. “He’s been my best friend for . . . well, forever, it seems. He’s the only one who’s always accepted me just the way I am. And I’ve always accepted him.”
“You mean his wooden leg?”
Is that all Alice-Marie saw when she looked at Petey—a peg leg where a foot should be? Libby shook her head. “Petey’s special. He’s not like other boys.”
She’d never forgotten her first conversation with Petey, less than an hour after being deposited at the orphans’ school. She had climbed a tree and refused to come down, proclaiming the people at that dumb school didn’t really want her and she didn’t want them, either! While Aaron Rowley and his hired hand pleaded and cajoled and finally threatened, Petey calmly limped to the storage shed, dragged a ladder across the scraggly grass, and shocked her by hopping up the rungs to join her.
There, perched beside her on a sturdy branch, Petey had asked why she thought no one wanted her. Even after all these years, she remembered her angry response: “My parents died an’ left me, my uncle sent me away, an’ all those people who came to meet the orphans on the train . . . none of ’em wanted me. All they wanted was a boy. So why should these people want me? I’m never gonna be a boy.”
She also remembered Petey’s calm reply: “But your folks didn’t want to leave you, not like mine who told me to get out ’cause they couldn’t afford to feed me no more. As for all those others . . .” He scratched his head, leaving his thick blond strands standing in tufts like little shocks of wheat. “Seems to me that’s their problem, not yours, if they turned away a fine girl who can climb trees faster’n any boy I know.” Sticking out his peg leg, he’d added, “Don’tcha think that if the folks here would take in a one-legged boy an’ give him a good home, they’d be more’n pleased to have a girl like you?”
Remembering the feeling of acceptance that had filled her in those moments, tears stung Libby’s eyes. He’d made her feel wanted, something she’d desperately needed. And tonight she’d made him feel unwanted. Unworthy. Unloved.
But Petey wasn’t the unworthy one, and somehow she had