Page 33 of Reaper

“Anytime, Darlin’.”

My gaze once again snaps to his at the use of that nickname again, and it still does funny things to me each time he uses it. However, I don’t know if I have the strength to ask him why he’s calling me that right now despite the fact that we’re alone. Instead, I take a deep breath, turn and look over the room with a more critical eye.

“They might not be usable again, but I’d still like to keep everything in here that survived. There’s so much history. Oh, and the steel blades, too. There’s a chance I might be able to recreate the handles for them. That is, if I can get them to keep a sharp edge again.”

I walk over and run my good hand over what’s left of a bow that Grandpa George had carved when he was a teenager. The glass had, not surprisingly, broken during the fire. However, I am surprised that part of the bow survived despite the broken glass. Especially with how old it is. Three-quarters of it still remains.

Exhaling heavily, I try to keep control over my emotions and walk back over to what remains of the wood carving wall as I’ve always called it and do the same, running my hand over a few of the older tools that are still hanging or are in their respective shelves or cubbyholes on the storage wall.

“Grandpa George had said that his father and grandfather had taught him how to carve. Every man in our family was taught the skill as well. You have no idea how happy I was when both Pappy and Grandpa George decided to pass on their skills and knowledge to me.”

Another tear escapes, sliding down my cheek as the memories wash over me, but I make no move to dry it.

Chapter 15

Reaper

Earlier,whenEmma’scarhad pulled up to the Thompson house, I dropped the charred wood that I’d been carrying outside and dusted my hands on my jeans. At least I’d had the foresight to wear a black shirt and black jeans today.

The image of Lark sitting in the backseat, staring out of the windshield of their car, tears pouring down her face, will forever be etched into my mind. The pain and grief in her eyes were damn near unbearable. Before I knew what was happening, I’d crossed the yard, ignoring my brother’s questions, and opened the door for her, offering her my hand to help her get out.

The second her gaze locked on mine; I was a goner. Even more so than the last time I’d seen her, two days before the fire.

But this time, there’s something different.

And I don’t mean her scars.

I could have stepped back once she was out of the car. To let her go through their house alone, but I just couldn’t. Instead, I had tucked her good arm around mine and when she’d nodded, Ifelt my chest puff up with pride that she was on my arm, trusting me to help her through this.

But now?

Now, all I want to do is pull her into my arms again, not caring if my brothers end up roasting me later for wanting to protect her, even from this, though I know it’s not possible.

As Lark’s hand caresses her family’s heirlooms again, my chest tightens as the grief on her face becomes more prominent. Both our grandfathers had been friends, and from the stories Gramps had told me, both Charlie and George had liked to work with their hands a lot. However, I hadn’t realized the degree to which they had taken their hobbies. Even when Lark had talked about it before, I never got the scope of how much they did or how talented they were.

Spanning the width of the room is a large wooden workbench and on the wall above it is what I’m betting is a storage... cabinet... No, that’s not quite right... It’s like they made a storage nook or bin for every tool they had. To keep them protected. From the sections that are mostly unmarked by the fire, soot, and water damage, you can tell that this was a labor of love and had taken a great deal of time to craft. Judging by the joints, this wasn’t a piece that was slapped together but instead, was carefully crafted. Probably by hand. Next to it, on the wall to the left of the carving area, tons of bows are hung up. Some of them are in cases, most likely to protect them, whereas others are just hanging off hooks. Or I should say, what remains of them are still hanging.

A soft chuckle has me turning back toward Lark, and she’s looking down at an old chisel in her hands as she rubs her thumb up and down the handle in a gentle caress.

“I would often see Pappy and Grandpa George whittling away after supper. If the weather was good, they’d be out on the patio sitting by a fire. If it wasn’t, they’d be in here as they listened tothe radio. One day, when I was eight, I snuck a butter knife out of the kitchen and grabbed a couple of sticks from the yard before running and hiding behind one of our big oak trees.

“I tried to mimic their movements and actions, but it was slow going with my weak eight-year-old hands and a dull butter knife. Not that I’d known much about the differences in knives at that age, but still, I wanted to be like them. It wasn’t even an hour after that before they found me, a pile of woodchips collected in my lap as I worked. When they saw what I was trying to do, they started teaching me how to carve and the importance of caring for, sharpening, and using the carving tools and blades. Not to mention the correct way to use the blades.”

She looks up then at the wall holding all the bows, her eyes misty with tears, but there’s also determination behind her pain and grief.

“That started a love affair with carving, and I haven’t stopped. Aside from continuing the tradition of carving my own bows, my goal was to update our house myself and to do it by hand. My great-great grandpa Raymond built this house with his father’s help. They hired local contractors, but they were both still there, working alongside whoever they hired. However, all of the furniture, cabinets, bookcases in the house? All of that was bought. It’d been slow going and it would have continued to have been slow going, but I wanted to have our entire house be hand crafted, as much as possible, by Thompson hands. Something that would last for future generations.”

She pauses as she walks over to the other wall opposite of the bows and runs her hand over what looks to be a charred-out cabinet.

“I was almost done making all the cabinet bases for the kitchen. I also had the frames for the cabinet doors cut and chiseled, but I was going to wait to assemble them until after the bases were installed to make sure I had the dimensionsright and didn’t need to tweak anything. The doors were going to be wooden frames that had panes of glass fit in them. And to continue with Pappy’s and Grandpa George’s theme, I carved designs into the door frames. Putting our family’s mark on them as Grandpa George used to always say.”

Lark pauses again as she sniffles and I look around the room again with fresh eyes.

In what remains, I can see the amount of detail that I now know for sure is hand carved pieces, and I step closer to a case hanging on that wall that holds an old bow, surprised that it mostly survived the fire. While there’s soot that’s settled into the grooves, you can tell that there are intricate designs carved into the face and the sides of the frame. For this one, the carvings all seem to be hunting related.

“That was my grandpa Raymond’s bow. He used it up until a crack started to form in the wood and then it sat on a shelf until Grandpa George snuck it out and made that case for it. Another passion in our family is bow hunting, if you haven’t already guessed that. In fact, I was supposed to go hunting later this month with Uncle Mark, but that’s not in the cards anymore.”

The last few words are barely above a whisper, and the grief in her voice intensifies. I turn, looking over my shoulder at her to find her staring down at her left arm and hand, which are covered in compression garments, something I know only after doing a lot of research on fires and fire victims this past month.