And above it, painted carefully onto the wall, were three little blue birds.
One had a crooked wing.
Exactly like the bird Dad had painted when I was a little girl.
I approached slowly.
My fingertips touched the wall.
“How did you do this?”
Ethan stepped beside me.
“Your photographs. The old videos. Every story you’ve told me.”
I shook my head.
“Even the colors?”
“Even the colors.”
He’d hired craftsmen to recreate details that had disappeared over the years.
Not to modernize the house beyond recognition.
Not to turn it into a luxury showpiece.
But to make it feel like the place I’d loved as a child.
He pointed toward the table.
“That one was still here when I bought the property. Two legs were damaged, so I repaired them.”
I touched its wooden edge.
Then I noticed a tiny dent.
I knew that dent.
I’d made it when I accidentally dropped one of Dad’s tools.
