Chapter 7 #3
“That’s—” Livvie shook her head, standing up, Huck trailing her hopefully as she returned to the counter.
“That’s completely wrong. Nate, that world gives people the reason they keep coming back.
They could get plot anywhere—plot comes cheap, plot runs a dime a dozen.
But the experience of being in Thornwood?
The sense that it’s a real place with real history? That’s what readers fall in love with.”
She now filled the sink with hot water. Steam rose and clouded the window.
“You owe it to them to finish this.” She found a dishrag and started to scrub off one of his previous soup bowls. “You owe it to Emma. You owe it to—”
“I know.”
The words came out sharper than he’d intended. Louder.
Livvie’s hands stilled. She turned, holding the dripping bowl over the sink.
The kitchen went quiet. Just the hum of the old refrigerator and Finn’s claws clicking on the floor as he wandered over to investigate the soup situation—or, more likely, to see if anyone planned to drop food.
“I know I owe them.” Nate’s voice came out rough, scraped raw by the admission. He stared at the soup he hadn’t touched, the steam curling up and dissipating into nothing. “I know I owe her. That’s the whole problem. I know exactly what this final story should be, and I can’t—”
He stopped. Pressed his palm flat against the table, grounding himself.
“She should have helped me figure it out. That’s always how we worked.
I’d build the world and she’d find the story in it, and then she’d get stuck on how something should land emotionally and I’d find the words, and it—” He shook his head.
“Like having half a brain each. Together we made a whole writer. Apart…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
Livvie stayed quiet for a long moment. Outside, the evening light softened, painting the lake in shades of amber and rose.
Then she dried her hands and pulled out the chair across from him. Sat down. Folded her hands on the table like they’d entered a business meeting, except her eyes looked too soft for business.
An expression that he somehow knew, deep inside. He looked away.
“What if,” she said slowly, “you didn’t have to figure it out alone?”
“You’re not Emma.” He turned back to her and didn’t mean to be harsh, but—well, the words weren’t cruel. Just true.
“No.” Livvie’s eyes met his, no offense in them.
“I’m not. No one could be. But you’re not the only one Emma talked out story with.
And I’m pretty good at asking the right questions.
At seeing what a story needs.” She leaned forward slightly, and he suddenly caught a floral scent, maybe embedded in her skin.
“I’m not trying to replace her. But maybe…
maybe two heads work better than one, even if they’re not the same two heads you’re used to. ”
He wanted to argue. He wanted to tell her she didn’t understand, that Emma and he had built a shorthand over a lifetime, that no amount of “good questions” could replicate what he’d lost.
But she looked at him with those hazel eyes—warm and stubborn and so frustratingly hopeful—and he thought about the paragraph on his laptop. The words that had come, unbidden, while she’d been gone. The door stood never locked, only heavy.
Maybe that meant something.
Maybe she’d already started helping, just by believing he could.
Her voice softened. “Nate. Will you please let me help you finish this book?”
The question hung in the air between them.
He should say no. He should protect himself. He should—
“Fine.”
The word escaped before he could stop it. A traitor syllable, defecting to the enemy.
Livvie’s whole face lit up like he’d handed her a winning lottery ticket. The transformation struck him as almost alarming. She went from earnest and pleading to incandescent in the space of a heartbeat.
“Really?”
“You can walk the dogs.” He held up a hand before she could get too excited. The universe’s weakest dam against a flood of enthusiasm. “Clean…something. Whatever this is.” He gestured at the suddenly organized kitchen, the dishes in the sink. “Just don’t get in my way.”
“I won’t.” She practically vibrated. Huck picked up on the energy and started wagging his tail again, feeding off her excitement. “This is going to work. I can feel it. Operation Book Written is officially a go.”
Nate closed his eyes. “Please don’t call it that.”
“Mission: Manuscript.”
“No.”
“Operation Drag Him to the End.”
He refused to smile. “Really?”
“How about Project Grumpy Genius?”
He looked away.
“You like that one. I can tell.” She leaned back. “We have two weeks to finish this thing. There’s only one thing to do.”
“Write the book?”
“I’m making a spreadsheet. Color-coded. With milestones.”
“Of course you are.”
She stood, gathering her cardigan from where she’d dropped it over a chair.
“Now will you please leave?” he asked.
“Fine.” She headed for the door, then paused at the threshold, looking back over her shoulder. The kitchen light caught the auburn in her hair, turned it warm as autumn leaves. “See you in the morning, writing buddy.”
“No, Livvie—”
“Too late!” The words trailed behind her as she disappeared into the hallway. The front door opened, letting in a gust of cool evening air, then closed with a decisive click.
The house went quiet.
Nate sat there for a moment, listening to the silence settle back into the corners where it lived. The soup had gone lukewarm now. It sat there getting cold while he cataloged everything that had just happened like a man reviewing footage of his own car crash.
He stood and walked toward the family room. The laptop sat where he’d left it on the coffee table, closed like a secret. But in his mind, he could still see the words.
The door stood never locked, only heavy.
She’s back. Emma sat in the writing chair.
Not really. He knew she didn’t really exist there. The rational part of his brain—the part that had earned a graduate degree and read too much philosophy and understood how grief manifested in the human psyche—knew that memory was causing this, or imagination, or exhaustion playing tricks.
But there she sat. Legs tucked up under her the way she always sat, bare feet peeking out from under the hem of her oversized cardigan.
Her hair hung dark and wild, the way it got when she’d been running her hands through it while she thought.
And she smiled—that knowing, slightly smug smile that meant she’d figured something out before he had.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said out loud to an empty room, because apparently, he’d turned into a man who had conversations with his dead sister.
The vision—the memory—the whatever—tilted her head. Her smile widened.
This is going to be fun.
Nate reached for the light switch.
“No,” he said. “It really won’t.”
He turned off the light. Walked away. Left her there in the dark with the closed laptop and the ending he still couldn’t write.
But even as he reheated his soup, then took it upstairs to his bedroom to eat in front of the television, and listened to the dogs settle on the floor beside him, he could sense it.
Something shifting.
Something cracking open, letting in light—or air, or hope, or whatever contagion Livvie Fox carried around with her.
Outside, the evening deepened over the lake, over the dock, over the two empty chairs that had been waiting for someone to fill them.
Heaven help him. Livvie was back.