Chapter 14: The Master’s Child
Four years later.
On a brilliant morning in early June, the timber workshop floor was alive with the sweet fragrance of cedar shavings, warm beeswax, and the sound of children's laughter.
Sitting in a pile of clean pine shavings was three-year-old Thomas—Lucas and Clara’s son—named not in bitterness, but in redemption and hope.
Little Thomas wore a pair of tiny denim overalls, holding a smooth wooden sanding block, carefully polishing the rounded edge of a small toy wooden wagon Lucas had shaped for him from scrap cherry wood.
""Daddy! Look!"" Thomas shouted, holding up the wagon with both hands. ""No wobbles! It rolls straight!""
Lucas knelt down in the shavings, taking the toy with his large, calloused hands, inspecting the joinery with exaggerated seriousness.
""That is master-grade woodwork, Thomas,"" Lucas smiled, kissing the boy's forehead. ""Just like your mother draws her conservation maps.""
Clara walked into the workshop carrying a basket of fresh red strawberries from the farm garden, her face glowing with radiant, enduring health. She leaned against the heavy maple workbench, resting her hand over her abdomen where their second child was growing beneath the warm morning light.
Her soul was completely at peace.
May you like
The cold basement rooms, the red carts of eviction, and the hollow illusions of suburban vanity had long since dissolved like morning fog before the rising sun.
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