Chapter 12 #2
The bakery was warm but quiet, the windows fogged with condensation and the smell of cinnamon rolls thick in the air.
Livvie pushed through the door—no line, just Edie adding cookies to the display with the efficiency of someone who’d been doing this for decades.
Red cheeks, graying hair pulled back in a neat bun, and the brightest blue eyes Livvie had ever seen.
She’d been running Maple Sweets since before Livvie was born, and she seemed to know every person who walked through the door.
Her daughter Remi, who was a few years younger than Livvie, was at the counter counting out change.
Her brown hair was tied up in a loose bun, and by the look on her face, the girl seemed not to have any interest in baking.
The familiar details greeted Livvie one by one—the dusty chalkboard menu, the cloudy glass of the small, faded display cases, the framed 1987 newspaper clipping of former Vice President Walter Mondale sipping coffee from one of the maroon mugs they still served almost forty years later.
“There she is!” Edie’s face lit up when Livvie reached the counter. “Our dragon painter. How’s it coming along?”
“Almost done. Four more days.”
“The kids can’t stop talking about it. Addie Garrison told everyone at school there’s an egg that’s going to hatch.” Edie was already reaching for a coffee cup. “The usual? And something for that handsome author of yours?”
That handsome author of yours. Livvie felt heat creep up her neck. “He’s not—yes. The usual. And maybe a maple scone for him?”
“Good choice. That man needs some sweetness in his life.” Edie winked and turned to the espresso machine.
While she waited, Livvie’s eyes drifted to the wall beside the register. She’d noticed the chalkboard before, the one with daily specials and pie announcements, but today there was something new next to it.
A hand-painted sign. Nate’s Book: Chapter Tracker
Below it, a grid. Twenty squares for twenty chapters. And next to each completed chapter, a small gold star.
Seven stars. Seven chapters done.
“Who did this?” Livvie asked.
Edie glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, that was Remi’s idea. She thought it would be fun to track his progress. You know, give the town something to root for.” She slid Livvie’s coffee across the counter. “Everyone loved Emma’s books. We want to see Nate finish what they started.”
Livvie stared at the seven gold stars. “And how did you know?”
“Lila keeps us updated.”
Oh, right. And Livvie kept her aunt updated. Still. The whole town. Rooting for him. Counting chapters. Waiting to see if he could do it.
She thought about Nate alone in his office, convinced he was a fraud. Convinced no one cared about his work, only Emma’s. Convinced he was writing into a void.
He had no idea.
“I’ll tell him,” she said quietly. “About the board.”
“You do that.” Edie handed her a paper bag with the scone inside. “And tell him we’re all pulling for him. Every single one of us.”
The green Craftsman sat quiet in the midday sun when she arrived twenty minutes later.
Livvie let herself in with her key—still strange, still wonderful, still something she tried not to think about too hard—and called out.
“Nate? I brought sustenance.”
A muffled sound from the office. Something that might have been “thanks” or might have been “go away.” Hard to tell with writers.
She set the coffee and scone on the kitchen counter and peeked through the office doorway.
He was at his desk, shoulders hunched, fingers moving over the keyboard. The screen glowed with text. His hair was a disaster, and he was wearing the same Henley as yesterday—or maybe the day before—but there was an energy to him that hadn’t been there a week ago. A focus.
He looked up.
And smiled.
Not a big smile. Not the kind you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. But real. Warm. The kind that reached his eyes and made something flutter dangerously in her chest.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey yourself.” She held up the bag. “Maple scone. Edie’s orders.”
“Edie has opinions about my eating habits?”
“Edie has opinions about everything. She also wanted me to tell you the whole town is tracking your chapters. There’s a board at the bakery. Seven gold stars.”
Something flickered across his face. Surprise. And underneath it, something that looked almost like hope.
“Seven stars,” he repeated.
“Seven stars. Remi’s idea. Apparently everyone wants to see you finish.”
He was quiet for a moment, looking at the screen, at the words he’d written. Then he shook his head slightly and turned back to the keyboard.
“I should get back to it.”
“I know. I’ll make lunch in a bit. Take your time.”
She retreated to the living room with her laptop and the stack of printed pages he’d left for her—chapters six and seven, fresh off the printer, marked with his cramped handwriting in the margins.
Huck lifted his head from his bed and wagged his tail. Finn didn’t even bother waking up. She settled into the corner of the couch, tucked her feet under a throw blanket, and started to read.
An hour later, she set down the pages and pressed her hand to her chest.
It was good.
Not just competent. Not just professional. The prose sang. The world breathed. And the characters—Aldric the grief-stricken protégé, the kingdom teetering on the edge of ruin—they felt real in a way that made her throat tight.
He’d found his voice. Somewhere in the past week, between the walks and the conversations and the slow unlocking of whatever had been blocking him, Nate Rivers had found the thing that made his writing his own.
She couldn’t wait to tell him.
She made lunch—grilled cheese and tomato soup, simple and warm—and carried it to his office. He emerged twenty minutes later, rubbing his eyes, and sat across from her at the kitchen table.
“How bad is it?” he asked, nodding toward the manuscript pages.
“It’s not bad at all.”
“You’re being kind.”
“I’m being honest.” She pushed a fresh bowl toward him. “Chapter seven, where Aldric confronts the council? I got chills. Actual chills. And the protégé’s scene at the grave—” She stopped, because his face had changed. Closed off. Guarded. “What?”
“The protégé.” He said it like the word tasted bitter. “I keep trying to write the scene where he has to face the one who killed his mentor. I’ve started it six times.”
“And?”
“And I can’t do it.” He stared at his soup, not eating. “Every time I try, I just…freeze. The grief feels too big. I don’t know how to write him through it.”
Livvie was quiet for a moment.
She thought about the story. The protégé who’d lost everything, who had to pick up his mentor’s sword and keep fighting, who was paralyzed by a grief too enormous to name.
She thought about Nate. Three years of silence. Three years of staring at a blank page. Three years of carrying Emma’s legacy on shoulders that were never meant to bear it alone.
“You know what his problem is,” she said quietly. “Don’t you?”
Nate looked up.
“He doesn’t think there’s anything on the other side,” she continued. “Of the grief. He thinks if he faces the loss of Morvain, if he really lets himself feel what he lost, it’ll destroy him. So he keeps dancing around it. Avoiding the POV that matters most.”
“That’s the character.”
“Is it?”
The question hung between them. Nate’s jaw tightened.
“I felt the same way when my mom died,” Livvie said.
He went still.
“I didn’t really talk about it when I was here that last summer.
I couldn’t. But the cancer…it was fast. Four months from diagnosis to funeral.
One minute she was there, and then she wasn’t.
” She looked down at her hands. “That summer, I was supposed to be getting work experience. Instead, I just…fell apart. I couldn’t eat.
Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t imagine feeling anything but that weight on my chest.”
“Livvie—”
“And then I met you—really met you for the first time.” She looked up, met his eyes.
“Emma and I were at the coffee shop, remember? You came to find her for some reason, and Emma spilled her latte all over my artbook. She was so horrified, and you just stood there and laughed at her, and she threw a napkin at your head—”
“I remember.” His voice was rough.
“You were both so…alive. Even with everything Emma was going through, even with all the hospital visits and the uncertainty, you were alive. You had hope. And being around you that summer—both of you—it helped me remember that grief doesn’t have to be the end of the story.”
The kitchen was quiet. Afternoon light slanted through the window, catching dust motes, turning everything gold.
“We don’t grieve the way the world grieves,” Livvie said softly. “We grieve with hope. Because we know this isn’t all there is. We’ll see them again. Your mom will see Emma again. You’ll see Emma again.”
Nate’s eyes were bright. He looked away, jaw working.
“Your protégé,” she said. “He needs to know there’s life after loss.
That carrying someone’s legacy doesn’t mean being destroyed by their absence.
He has to face the one who killed Morvain—but more than that, he has to face his own grief.
And when he does, he’ll find that it doesn’t kill him. It transforms him.”
Silence stretched between them.
Then Nate pushed back from the table. “I need to—” He stopped. Started again. “I think I know how to write it.”
“Go.”
He was already moving toward the office. At the doorway, he paused. Looked back at her.
“Livvie.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
And then he was gone, the office door clicking shut behind him.
Three hours later, the light was fading and Nate was still writing.
Livvie had washed the dishes, read another chapter, taken the dogs for a short walk around the property. Through the office door came the steady click of keys, the occasional pause, the rhythm of a writer who’d finally found his way into the heart of the story.
He didn’t need her right now.
The thought should have felt like victory. Instead, it left her hollow.
She knocked softly on the office door. “Nate? I’m heading back to Lila’s.”