Chapter 8 #2
Adelaide’s gaze softened. “I’m saying some connections don’t vanish. They linger. And if we’re open, they find their way back to us—though not always as we expect.”
Tears slipped down Cora’s cheeks. She didn’t bother to wipe them away. “You really think it’s possible that I could see him again?”
Adelaide peeled off her gloves and came around the table—not hurriedly, but with quiet grace. She placed a steady hand over Cora’s.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But when a soul stirs yours that deeply, it leaves a mark. And marks like that…” Her thumb brushed Cora’s knuckles. “They don’t fade.”
Cora closed her eyes, pressing Adelaide’s hand lightly in return. For the first time in days, her heart didn’t feel quite as hollow.
Aaron had left a mark on her soul.
And maybe—just maybe—there was more to that mark than memory.
By noon, the light outside had turned soft and pearly, the kind that made old brick glow. Cora helped Adelaide box the last of the programs before finally breaking the companionable silence.
“Adelaide… May I ask you something a little strange?”
The older woman smiled faintly, not looking up from the box she was labeling. “In this place, strange is the usual language.”
“Do you remember a restaurant called Big Sal’s? It was a sandwich shop by the college.”
Adelaide’s gloved hands stilled in midfold. “Big Sal’s,” she echoed. “Of course. Greasy tables, the best marinara within fifty miles. Why?”
“I saw it,” Cora said, hesitant at first, then firmer. “In that other life. Aaron proposed to me there.” She swallowed. “I looked it up online. There’s one on Leighton Street. I wondered if that could be the same one.”
Adelaide tilted her head thoughtfully. “Only one in town. Changed owners a few times, but it endures—like certain stories.” Her eyes lifted, kind and knowing. “You should go.”
Cora blinked. “Go?”
“Go see it for yourself,” Adelaide said. “Some places remember us, even when we’ve forgotten them. You might be surprised by what stirs when you stand there again.”
The lunch crowd had thinned when Cora pushed open the door to Big Sal’s. The bell above it jingled, a sound so familiar it stopped her cold. The scent of garlic and baked bread enveloped her. The air was warm, heavy with nostalgia.
Little had changed. The red-checked tablecloths and vinyl booths remained, and the same retro jukebox hummed tunes from another century. For a dizzy heartbeat, she could almost see herself sitting across from Aaron, laughing, his hand curled around hers.
She gripped the back of a chair until the moment steadied. The sandwiches she’d ordered online for her and Adelaide weren’t ready, so she drifted toward the tables by the window.
Brooke and Kylie sat near the front with iced coffees, heads bent together over their tablets. They looked up when Cora passed.
“Cora.” Brooke smiled absently, clearly distracted. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Last-minute decision.” Cora returned the smile, the words feeling oddly distant in her mouth. “What are you two working on?”
“We’re brainstorming ways to keep Collister College from selling that piece of land to Larry Soukup,” Kylie said wryly, tapping the edge of her iPad. “Figured caffeine and carbs couldn’t hurt.”
“I thought that was a done deal,” Cora murmured. Her gaze slid around the room again, taking in the worn booths, the framed photos, the sunlight spilling across the tile.
This place is real, she thought. Exactly the same as in my…memory, or whatever it is.
Brooke pressed her lips together. “The deal isn’t done until the papers are signed.”
Before Cora could respond, her name rang out from the counter. “Summerbell!”
The voice—deep, cheerful—made her flinch. For one impossible second, she almost expected to turn and see Aaron standing there, grin crooked, ring box hidden in his palm.
Instead, a teenage employee waited behind the register, holding a paper sack.
Cora exhaled and crossed to take it. “Thanks,” she managed.
Outside, the air was crisp and clear. She stood beneath the awning, the bag warm in her hands, holding two pastrami-on-rye sandwiches with extra pickles. She wasn’t sure if Adelaide liked pickles, but if she didn’t, Cora would happily eat them all.
The ache in her chest was no longer sharp—it was tender, familiar. The town, the library, even this little restaurant—they were all reminders that some things endured in quiet, unseen ways.
As she started back toward Main Street, the wind lifted her hair and carried with it the faintest trace of spicy meat, tart pickles and memory.
And for just a heartbeat, she could almost hear Aaron’s laugh drifting after her—soft, certain and impossibly near.
The house was hushed when Cora returned from the library, the only sounds the faint hum of the refrigerator and the steady tick of the wall clock. She dropped her keys in the bowl by the door and climbed the stairs.
Upstairs, afternoon light spilled through the bay window, warm and slanting. She opened her laptop on the desk, the screen flaring to life with its familiar blue-white glow.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. Aaron.
No last name.
She frowned, scrolling mentally through the memories—the moments she’d seen, the things she knew.
She’d met his parents and his sister. She’d been in their house, shared dinner with them, laughed at stories around their table, but their names were a blur.
She’d been so focused on the feeling, not the facts.
That realization stung.
Cora typed in a search anyway.
Aaron Collister College GraceTown MD
The results blinked back at her—a handful of news articles, old yearbooks scanned in low resolution, LinkedIn profiles of professors. She clicked through them one by one, scanning photos, faces. None of them was him.
She refined her search, adding the years he’d have been an undergraduate.
Nothing.
Maybe he’d gone to law school after all. Maybe he’d stayed in GraceTown. Two pretty big ifs, but still worth trying. She tried more searches.
Aaron GraceTown MD attorney
Aaron Collister College of Law
Each time, the results narrowed to nothing useful—a century of archived names, wrong timelines, unfamiliar smiles.
She sighed and sat back.
If he existed, she reasoned, he’d have some kind of digital footprint.
She turned to social media next—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn—scrolling through page after page of Aarons. Too young. Too old. Wrong hair, wrong eyes, wrong smile.
She refined her social media search again, adding GraceTown, then Collister, then both.
Still nothing.
Some accounts were locked, others long abandoned, frozen in time. Each unfamiliar face left her more unsettled. The world was overflowing with Aarons, yet none of them was him.
After an hour, a headache had formed, a tight band circling her forehead. Leaning back in her chair, she rubbed her eyes.
You’re a librarian, she reminded herself. You can find anything.
She dove deeper, searching alumni records, archived local newspapers, digitized commencement programs. Her pulse kicked when she found a scanned issue from the right year, but the list of graduates blurred before her eyes. No Aaron she recognized.
The logical part of her brain whispered what she didn’t want to admit: Maybe he never existed in this version of GraceTown.
She sat back, staring at the faint reflection of her face in the screen.
The ache in her head—and in her heart—wasn’t from defeat. It was from knowing how real he’d felt. His laugh, his hands, the way he’d said her name. Those things couldn’t be invented… Could they?
Her cursor blinked in the empty search box.
She typed another search variation, slower this time.
Aaron Collister Legal Department
She hit the enter key.
The wheel spun, the page refreshed—and then froze for a breath too long, as if the internet itself were holding its breath.
When the results appeared, they were the same as before.
Cora exhaled, long and even, and put the laptop to sleep.
The screen dimmed, leaving her reflection hovering, ghostlike, in the dark glass.
No answers. Not yet.
But absence wasn’t proof of impossibility.
She traced a fingertip along the edge of the computer and whispered, “I’ll find you.”
Then she rose, the chair creaking softly, and crossed to the window. Outside, the sky was deepening toward evening, the first lights of Main Street beginning to glow. Somewhere out there, the truth waited—just beyond what could be searched or cataloged.
And she intended to find it.