hers, eyes flaring with recognition as his body stilled. As quick as that, his expression shuttered dispassionately. But she’d seen it. He hadn’t been quick enough to hide from her.
“Lucas, you read more than some. You read as well as anyone.” Why had he lied about that? He was eying her warily now as though waiting for her to pounce. “I just quoted Alexandre Dumas. But I think you know that.” She paused for a heartbeat, two. “Do you have the backpack, Lucas? It was my mother’s.”
He remained still for another few seconds and then he blew out a breath, seeming to come to some internal conclusion. He stood and walked to a place near the front corner of the cabin, kneeling and lifting a board from the floor. Harper watched, confused, as he lifted something from it, the turquoise color causing her to put her hands over her mouth. I was right. She’d remembered correctly. She stood quickly, then knelt next to him, taking the backpack and hugging it to her chest. “Thank you,” she whispered. Another piece of my mother.
But as he stared at the backpack, there was a look of acute loss in his eyes . . . as though it’d been as precious to him as it was to her. “It was your mother’s. You should have it,” he said, as though convincing himself. “I’m sorry I didn’t give it to you when I gave you the necklace.”
She took in his expression, feeling as though her intention was to give to him, yet she was somehow always taking instead. She slowly opened the backpack, removing a few loose papers, and a stack of spiral-bound notebooks. Tears filled her eyes as she leafed through the notebook on top, her mother’s handwriting immediately familiar even though it’d been so long since she’d seen it.
As she took a moment to look through the pages, she noticed they were wrinkled and dog-eared as though they’d been read over and over and over. Some sentences were faded as though a finger had gone over them repetitively, underlining, memorizing maybe. In many places, there were identical lines written under her mother’s words, as though someone had sought to recreate the writing, or perhaps practice his own. There were drawings in the margins too, renderings of trees, leaves, a wolf, and other forest animals all connected, swirled together so that you had to look closely to single out the individual elements. As Harper looked through, she saw that the practice lines of text went from boyish to more polished, and the doodled artwork got better too, crisper and more realistic. He was no Picasso but there was a loveliness in the simplicity of his artwork. And she knew what she was seeing: Lucas growing up right there on the pages. Her chest felt tight.
Near the end, there were questions written in his handwriting. He had gone over and over her mother’s notes and questions and realizations about life and love, friendship, vengeance, forgiveness, and all the themes Harper knew were in her mother’s favorite literary work.
When she looked up at him and met his eyes, he was blushing, an acute look of shame in his expression. “Sorry,” he said, his tone remorseful, glancing at the place where he’d drawn a wolf howling at the moon.
She shook her head. “It’s okay. Lucas, I . . . I love them.” She tilted her head. “Was the book in here too?” she asked, peering into the empty backpack, seeing only a few pens that looked as though they’d been used until the ink ran out.
He shook his head. “No book. Just her notes and pens.”
Harper raised her eyes to Lucas again, who knelt watching her go through the pages, what had surely been a form of human connection when he was so very alone. The thing books—emotions she could relate to in other people’s stories—had been to her. Her heart twisted, half joy, half sorrow as she realized that, yes, the forest had nourished his body, but her mother’s words had nourished his soul.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Get over here, you,” Rylee called, shaking out the hair salon cape quickly and tossing it over the back of the chair. “You didn’t have to come in for a cut to see me. I would have come over to your place later.”
Harper grinned, wrapping her arms around her friend and squeezing her tight. “I couldn’t wait. And I could use a trim.” Rylee raised a brow. They both knew that wasn’t