Page 64 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
Jace swallowed. “I was ... looking for glue, sir.”
“Well, that depends on what you plan on gluing together. How about you tell me what the heck you need it for, and I’ll tell you where the glue you need is.”
Jace braced himself. He reached into the coat’s inner pocket, carefully took out the doll, and laid it on the workbench. “I was going to fix this, sir.”
The Colonel jerked in recognition and reached for it. “You break this?” His voice was guarded and cold.
“No,” Jace said quickly. “No, I—” He wouldn’t break Holly’s confidence. He refused. “I don’t know the whole story, but I know Holly was really upset about it. I wanted to surprise her.”
“She would be,” the Colonel said softly, holding the doll gently. “This belonged to her grandmother. My ma. My parents didn’t have any girls, and Ma had a lot of antique dolls that she passed down to my girls. Holly was theone who really took to it.”
“I didn’t know that,” Jace said quietly. “I just knew she was upset about it, and I can’t afford a Christmas present for her, but I thought I could fix this and give it back to her. I’ve started working on sewing up the dress, but I’m going to have to glue the head and face and hands.”
“That’s not going to go back together exactly like it was,” the Colonel said, turning over the doll in his big, callused hands. “You’ll still see the cracks. You might repaint it, but it won’t have the same finish as the original china.”
“Maybe it won’t be exactly the same. I still want to try.”
The Colonel nodded and got off his stool. “Well, you don’t want wood glue for it. Let me see what kinds of epoxy I’ve got.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jace had the doll glued, clamped, and drying. The Colonel had handed over the epoxy and then stood back, watch with his arms crossed as Jace quietly and efficiently glued the doll back together. He’d never worked with anything quite like this, but it wasn’t too different from other things he’d fixed.
“You’ve a fine touch with your hands,” the Colonel said. “I know you’ve fixed up a lot of things for us.”
Jace looked down at his hands with reflexive self-consciousness. Perfectly human hands right now, with just a little extra hair on the backs. But he couldn’t rely on them to stay that way, and that was the crux of the problem.
“I can fix things,” he said. “People are harder.”
There was the faintest twitch of a smile at one corner of the craggy mouth. “Isn’t that the truth.” The Colonel fingered one of the halfway sewn-up slashes in the doll’s dress. “You don’t know what happened to it?”
“I found Holly with it, sir.”
If he had to choose, keeping faith with Holly was what he would always do. Forever.
The Colonel made a grunting noise. “You know,” he said, “I think you might be able to help me with something.”
“If I can, I’d like to,” Jace said cautiously.
They went back to the woodworking table. Rocket got up off the floor and trotted slowly after them.
“Guess you’ve noticed I spend a lot of time out here,” the Colonel said. He crouched down with a grunt of effort and began pulling a few items out from under the worktable: a large bin with drawers full of screws, a couple of old wooden apple crates containing tools and other items, an old-fashioned tin milk can ...
“Can I help you with any of that, sir?”
“Don’t trouble yourself, son. What I need is here.”
He opened the top of an apple crate and pulled something out. It looked like a tangled mess of yarn in different colors, with sticks poking out of it.
“What’s that?” Jace asked.
“You know anything about knitting?”
Jace blinked. It took him a moment to muster a reply. “Uh, no.”
“Me neither,” the Colonel grumbled. “What it’s supposed to be is a sweater for that ridiculous little dog of hers. What it’s turning into is a mess.”
Well, the mystery of who had been rummaging around in Noelle’s sewing supplies was solved, Jace thought as he stared at the tangled snarl of yarn, which now that he thought about it, did look like part of it was forming into some kind of tube. Sort of.
“Got a book on it,” the Colonel added, pulling out something else and slapping it down on the woodworking table.
