Chapter 3
Three
The cursor blinked.
He typed a sentence. Read it. Hated it. Deleted it.
Typed another. It was worse. Deleted.
His hands hovered over the keys like he was trying to remember a language he used to speak fluently. The words were in there somewhere. He knew they were in there. But something had washed out the path between his brain and his fingers—overgrown now, impassable.
The blank page stared back at him.
Tell me about Thornwood again.
The thought came unbidden, in a voice that wasn’t his own. And before he could stop it, the memory pulled him under—
The hospital room smelled like antiseptic and flowers—the lilies Mom kept bringing that Emma pretended to love. Machines beeped their steady rhythm. The light was always wrong in here—too harsh, too flat, making everyone look sicker than they were.
Emma sat propped against a stack of pillows, a notebook open on her lap, pen moving in slow circles. She’d been writing something, or trying to. The handwriting got shakier as she tired.
“Tell me about Thornwood again.” He’d asked her that, just to pull her out of her funk. “About the prophecy, and Aldric and Elara, the lost princess.”
She’d made up that story years ago during her first hospital stay. He’d been sitting in that same plastic chair, not knowing what to say, and she’d looked at him with those dark eyes, and when she asked him for a story, he had nothing.
So she’d told him one, rescuing him, as always.
In his memory, he took the notebook and pen from her and started to transcribe as she talked.
“You should publish it, Nate. Make a real story out of it.” Her smile was tired but sincere.
“It’s just a daydream.”
“They’re all just daydreams until someone writes them.” She reached for his hand, her grip weaker than it used to be. “You’re good at the words. Do it for me.”
The cursor was still blinking when he surfaced from the grip of the memory.
The office quiet settled around him. The coffee had gone cold beside him—he didn’t remember setting it down.
Outside the window, the afternoon light had shifted, become golden and long, which meant he’d been sitting here for…
he didn’t know how long. Long enough for Finn to give up waiting and curl up under the desk.
Long enough for the memory to leave a hollow ache.