Chapter 16
Sixteen
Maybe he was right.
The thought circled Livvie’s brain as she sat on the edge of her bed, Emma’s notebook in her lap, listening to the silence where Nate’s voice had been. He was gone—back to his house, back to his grief, back to the walls she’d thought they’d dismantled together.
She’d heard the door slam. Heard his footsteps on the gravel path. Heard nothing since.
Maybe she did this—inserted herself where she didn’t belong, took things that weren’t hers to take, convinced herself that helping was the same as loving when really it was just…need. Her need. To be needed.
She looked down at the notebook. Emma’s handwriting on the cover—a swirling, artistic E.R. that she’d probably doodled a hundred times. Inside were story ideas, character sketches, plot fragments. The ending of the Thornwood Chronicles.
What had she done?
A soft knock on the door.
“Livvie?” Aunt Lila’s voice, gentle. “Can I come in?”
Livvie’s face burned. Of course Lila had heard. The walls in this cottage were thin, and Nate hadn’t exactly been quiet. Her aunt had probably heard every word—every accusation, every sob Livvie had failed to swallow.
“I’m fine,” she said. Her voice cracked on the word.
The door opened anyway.
Lila stood in the doorway, her painting smock on, a smudge of blue on her cheek. Her eyes took in Livvie—the tear-streaked face, the notebook clutched like a life raft, the rigid posture of someone trying very hard not to fall apart.
“Come downstairs,” she said. Not a question. “I’m making tea.”
The kitchen was warm with morning light, the coral-pink cabinets and turquoise walls aggressively cheerful against Livvie’s gray mood. She sat at the pine table while Lila moved around the space—filling the kettle, pulling mugs from the shelf, measuring loose tea into a pot painted with sunflowers.
The notebook sat between them like evidence at a crime scene.
“Tell me,” Lila said, not turning from the stove.
So Livvie did.
Emma’s room. Her sketches and Livvie’s brilliant idea to finish the Storybook Corner. “I thought it would…help him heal, I think.”
Lila had made her mm-hmm sound, just listened.
“And when he started searching for it, I just couldn’t…I couldn’t tell him. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“He said I had no right.” Livvie’s voice broke. “He said I help too much. He said—”
She couldn’t repeat the rest. It hurt too much.
Lila touched her hand to Livvie’s. “And what do you think?”
“I think—” Livvie swallowed. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe I do this. Take over. Make things about my need to be needed instead of what the other person actually wants.”
She twisted the ring on her finger—the silver fox, worn smooth from years of this exact nervous habit. Her mother’s ring. The only thing Livvie had asked for after the funeral, the only piece of her mother she wore every day.
“Maybe I should have just left the notebook where it was. Let him figure things out on his own. Instead I—” She laughed, bitter and wet. “I couldn’t help myself. I saw a problem I could solve and I just…had to solve it. Even when no one asked me to.”
Lila was quiet for a long moment. Steam rose from her mug. Outside, a bird sang something inappropriately cheerful.
“Can I tell you what I see?” she finally asked.
Livvie nodded, bracing herself.
“I see a woman with a generous, giving, beautiful heart.” Lila’s voice was steady.
Certain. “I see someone who found something she genuinely believed would help the man she cares about. Yes, maybe you should have asked first. Maybe you overstepped. But Livvie—” She reached across the table and took Livvie’s hand. “This isn’t about you.”
“What?”
“His reaction. The explosion. The cruelty of what he said.” Lila squeezed her fingers. “That’s not about you. That’s about him. About grief. About a wound so deep he doesn’t know how to hold it without lashing out.”
Livvie shook her head. “But I took Emma’s notebook. I invaded his—”
“You found his sister’s ideas, and I think you needed to heal too.”
Oh.
“Was it the right call? Maybe not. But was it malicious? Was it selfish?” Lila’s eyes held hers. “You tell me.”
“No,” she whispered. “I just wanted to help him.”
“I know you did. And somewhere under all that pain, he knows it too.” Lila released her hand and sat back. “But grief doesn’t think clearly. Grief lashes out. Grief says terrible things it doesn’t mean because the alternative is feeling the unbearable weight of loss.”
She looked out the window, at Nate’s silent home. “Maybe I need to let go,” she said quietly. “Of the need to be needed. Of thinking I can fix everyone.”
“Maybe.” Lila tilted her head. “Or maybe you need to stop tying your identity to fixing things in the first place.”
Livvie looked up. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve spent your whole life trying to be useful, sweetheart.
Trying to earn your place. Trying to prove that you deserve to be loved by being indispensable.
” Lila’s voice was gentle but unflinching.
“But what if you just…let someone love you for who you are? Without fixing anything. Without earning it.”
The words hit somewhere deep.
“Like who?” Livvie asked. Her voice came out small.
“Like God.” Lila smiled. “There’s a verse I think about often. Zephaniah 3:17. ‘The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.’”
She stood and crossed to the windowsill, where a small cross-stitch hung in a simple wooden frame. Livvie had noticed it before but never read it closely. Now she saw the words, stitched in delicate blue thread:
He will rejoice over you with singing.
“Your mother made that,” Lila said quietly. “Did you know?”
Livvie’s throat closed. “No.”
“She gave it to me right after you were born.” Lila touched the frame gently. “She said she wanted me to remember it. Because she’d finally learned it was true.”
“Finally learned?”
Lila turned back to face her. Her expression was complicated—sad and tender and something else Livvie couldn’t name.
“Did your parents ever tell you about the separation?”
Livvie went still. “What separation?”
“Before you were born. About a year before.” Lila sat back down at the table. “Your mother and father—they almost didn’t make it. He was working too much, she was pulling away, they’d stopped talking about anything that mattered. They separated for six months.”
Livvie couldn’t speak. Her parents—her distant, workaholic, achievement-obsessed parents—had almost divorced?
“Your mother came to stay with me during that time,” Lila continued. “Right here, actually. In this cottage. And somewhere in those six months, she found her way back to faith. Real faith, not just Sunday-morning faith. The kind that changes you.”
Lila touched her fox ring. “She went back to your father with a different heart. And things were hard for a while—healing always is—but they worked through it. Together.” Lila’s eyes were bright. “And then they found out she was pregnant. With you.”
The room felt very quiet.
“You were their reconciliation, Livvie. Their peace offering. Their proof that broken things could be made new.” Lila reached out and touched her hand. “Do you know what Olivia means?”
Livvie shook her head. She’d never thought to look it up.
“Peace. It comes from the olive branch—the symbol of reconciliation, of new beginnings.” Lila smiled. “Your parents chose that name on purpose. Because you were their new beginning.”
Something gave way behind Livvie’s ribs.
All these years. All this time thinking she wasn’t enough. Thinking her father’s distance meant she’d failed to earn his love. Thinking she had to prove herself, over and over, to deserve a place in her own family.
And she’d been wrong.
“Why didn’t she ever tell me that she had faith?”
“Your mother tried, Livvie. Every summer she brought you here, that was her trying. She didn’t know how to be soft—she’d never learned—but she kept showing up.”
Yeah, she could see that, maybe. Livvie sighed. “Dad pulled away after Mom died,” she said slowly, working it out. “I thought it was because I wasn’t enough. Because I couldn’t fill the space she left.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Lila’s voice was thick.
“Your father pulled away because he was drowning. Not because of anything you did or didn’t do.
He’d lost the woman who taught him how to love again.
He’s been grieving ever since—badly, clumsily, in all the wrong ways.
But it was never about you not being enough. ”
People do things that don’t make sense when they’re grieving.
“Just like Nate,” she whispered.
“Just like Nate.” Lila squeezed her hand. “You can’t fix grief, Livvie. Not for your father, not for Nate, not for anyone. All you can do is love them through it. And trust that eventually—eventually—the storm will pass.”
He will rejoice over you with singing.
Her mother had believed that. Had stitched it into fabric so she wouldn’t forget.
Maybe it was time Livvie believed it too.
Her phone rang.
The sound was jarring—harsh and modern against the soft morning light. Livvie pulled it from her pocket, saw the name on the screen: Priya.
“I should take this,” she said.
Lila nodded and stood, giving her privacy, disappearing into the sunroom with her tea.
Livvie answered. “Hey, Pri.”
“Livvie.” Priya’s voice was tight. Urgent. “Where are you?”
“Still in Minnesota. The dedication for my friend Emma’s Storybook Corner at the library is tomorrow, and I—”
“You need to come back. Now.”
Livvie’s stomach dropped. “What’s happening?”
“The company is restructuring faster than anyone expected. Richard’s on the warpath. There’s a meeting tomorrow—”
“On a Sunday?”
“Yes! It’s mandatory, all hands—and if you’re not there…” Priya paused. “I’m not supposed to be telling you this, but if you’re not in that meeting, you won’t have a job to come back to.”
Livvie closed her eyes.