Chapter 17 #2
Everyone had heard. Of course they had—glass walls, thin doors, the acoustics of an open office designed for collaboration and perfect for eavesdropping. Faces turned toward her as she passed—shock, admiration, fear, something that might have been hope.
Priya stood by Livvie’s desk, eyes wide.
Livvie didn’t stop to explain. She grabbed her laptop bag, her sad plant—the half-dead fiddle-leaf fig she’d somehow kept alive for six years through sheer stubbornness—and the single photo on her desk: her and Aunt Lila at the lake house, taken years ago, both of them laughing at something she couldn’t remember.
That was it. That was her entire professional life, reduced to what she could carry in two hands.
Derek Huang caught her eye as she passed. His expression was unreadable, but he gave her a small nod. Acknowledgment. Maybe even respect.
She didn’t nod back. She just walked.
The elevator doors opened the moment she pressed the button—small mercy, that. She stepped inside, turned to face the closing doors, and watched the fourteenth floor disappear.
Then she was alone.
Her reflection stared back at her from the mirrored walls. Armor still intact. Blazer sharp. Heels painful. But something different in her eyes—something that hadn’t been there when she’d walked in this morning.
Respect.
Except her hands shook.
She looked down at them—the laptop bag clutched in white-knuckled fingers, the sad plant balanced precariously, the fox ring catching the fluorescent light. Her mother’s ring. Her mother’s faith. He will rejoice over you with singing.
“Wow,” she whispered to her reflection. “I just did that.”
The elevator descended. Floor thirteen. Twelve. Eleven.
She’d just told off the most powerful man in the building. Then she’d walked out with her head high and her dignity intact and absolutely no idea what happened next.
She was unemployed. She was possibly blacklisted. She had no plan, no safety net, no backup.
But she’d said the truth. Out loud. To his face.
Her whole body was trembling now—adrenaline crash, fear, the delayed reaction to blowing up her entire life. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she blinked them back. Not yet. Not here. She could fall apart later, in her apartment, alone.
Right now, she just needed to get out of this building.
Floor six. Five. Four.
She should call Aunt Lila. Meg. They would tell her she’d done the right thing, that she wasn’t crazy, that the terrifying lightness in her chest was freedom and not free fall.
But there was only one person she really wanted to talk to.
And he hadn’t called.
Floor three. Two.
The elevator dinged. The doors slid open.
Livvie walked through the lobby, past the security desk, through the revolving doors, out into the gray September morning. The cold hit her face like a slap—sharp, bracing, real.
She stood on the sidewalk, sad plant in one hand, laptop bag over her shoulder, the entire city rushing past her like she was a stone in a river.
What now?
She didn’t know. She had no idea.
But she knew one thing—she needed to read Nate’s manuscript. She needed to know what Nate had written. She needed to understand what “the ending is terrible” meant, and why he’d turned it in without telling her.
And despite herself, she had to help him fix it.
Yeah, pitiful, but it was what Emma would want her to do.
And that, more than anything, was what had driven her out to Maple Lake in the first place. The realization sifted through her, found her bones.
She’d done the right thing.
She hailed a cab, climbed inside with her plant and her bag, and gave the driver her address.
Then she pulled out her phone and downloaded the manuscript from her work email—while she still had access, before they cut her off.
The file was huge. Three hundred pages. Three years of grief and hope and words that had almost never been written.
She started reading.
She wasn’t at the festival.
Not that Nate expected her, but he’d checked the crowd three times. Scanned every face, every sweater, every cluster of people gathered around the bonfire and the cider booth and the library steps, where Mayor Gillson would be making his speech.
Livvie wasn’t there.
Earlier, he’d stood in his kitchen staring at two words on a laptop screen.
Message sent.
The manuscript had left his hands. Hurtling toward Richard’s inbox, cc’d to Livvie, and toward whatever came next. Three years of silence, broken. A deadline met. A promise to Emma, kept.
He should have experienced something. Triumph. Relief.
He experienced nothing. Just hollowness.
The late-afternoon sun slanting through the kitchen windows caught dust motes and turned them gold. Her mug sat in the drying rack—the blue one with the chip, the one she’d claimed as hers. Finally washed. Evidence erased.
An envelope sat on the counter beside his laptop.
White rectangle. Her handwriting—just his name, Nate, in blue ink.
The loops on the N, the way the e tilted slightly right.
He’d found the notebook on the porch when he’d returned from a walk with the dogs, the letter tucked inside. Carried it inside. Set it down.
His hand reached for it. Stopped. Pulled back.
Not yet.
He’d showered, the hot water stinging his tired shoulders, and put on clean clothes. The navy Henley. He caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Dark circles. Hollow cheeks. A man who’d forgotten to eat.
He’d driven to the festival with a thin, fragile hope beating in his chest.
Maybe she would be there.
He parked on a side street and walked toward the lights. The Flannel Festival’s closing ceremony had transformed the town square into something out of a storybook.
Edison bulbs crisscrossed overhead, warm golden light against the purple dusk.
The temperature had dropped with the sun, and his breath fogged in the cold air.
The big maple tree in the center wore flannel ribbons—red-and-black-and-blue plaid—the fabric waving in the evening breeze, lit from below by spotlights that turned the trunk to amber.
Candles ringed the empty fountain, flames dancing behind glass holders.
Somewhere a fiddle played—something bright and festive, weaving through the square’s noise.
Children ran through the crowd, their laughter high and clear.
The smell of woodsmoke drifted from a bonfire pit nearby on the beach, mixing with hot cider and caramel apples and the sharp sweetness of maple candy.
He aimed for Maple Sweets, with its red-and-white striped awning, and went inside.
Of course, his gaze went to the chart with a fresh gold star under Last Chapter!!
He should update that with a The End.
“Nate!”
Remi appeared from behind the booth and hugged him before he could react. A smudge of icing decorated her apron—white powder against the red flannel—and her dark hair had begun to escape its ponytail. She smelled like cinnamon and maple syrup.
“So?”
“It’s finished.”
She grinned. “I knew you would. Emma—and Livvie—would be so proud.”
Yeah, maybe not, given the ending. Still, he tried to smile. The expression sat wrong on his face, like wearing a pair of borrowed shoes.
Someone pressed a cup of hot cider into his hands. He wrapped his cold fingers around it. Didn’t drink.
The library stood as the centerpiece of the ceremony.
Warm light spilled from the tall windows, and through the glass, the Storybook Corner glowed.
The mural Livvie had painted—emerald forests and amber light and silver-blue shadows.
The carved tree trunk reading nook Wes Donovan had built.
The dedication sign with Emma’s name in gold lettering.
Beautiful. Everything Emma had dreamed of.
Hazel Brightman found him, her purple cardigan buttoned against the chill, her reading glasses fogging. Her eyes glistened behind the lenses. She squeezed his arm. “Mayor Gillson is about ready with the dedication.”
He gave her a nod. But he couldn’t help but scan the crowd as he headed toward the stage.
She wasn’t there.
She really wasn’t coming. Livvie was gone.
June Bellamy squeezed his arm as she passed, her white hair silver in the Edison glow. “Good to see you out, Nate.”
He drifted toward the edge of the crowd, away from the congratulations, and stopped pretending to celebrate.
The dedication speeches had begun. Mayor Gillson stood at the microphone on the library steps, his breath fogging as he spoke.
He talked about Emma—her contribution to the community, her story hour, her vision for the Storybook Corner.
How she’d started the project before she got sick the final time.
How she’d been only twenty-four when she died, with so much left to give.
Through the library windows, the mural glowed.
Livvie’s mural. The colors she’d mixed and applied with her own hands, morning after morning, before walking to his cottage to help him with the book.
Emerald moss on ancient trees. Amber light filtering through painted leaves.
The silver-blue of twilight shadows where magical creatures hid.
She’d done that. For Emma. For him.
And he’d pushed her away. Just like he’d pushed her away at the funeral. Just like he’d pulled back from the almost-kiss all those years ago.
The pattern emerged clear now. Every time she got close, he found a way to make her leave.
Oh. Wow.
“You don’t look happy.”
Lila appeared beside him—small, silver-haired, wrapped in a purple shawl that looked hand-knit. A worn paperback tucked under her arm. One of his books—The Thornwood Chronicles: Book One—the spine cracked white with reading.
“What are you doing with that?”
She glanced at the book. “Oh, I picked up a copy at the book sale.”
He tried a smile.
“Now that’s terrifying.”
He let the smile fall. Set the cold cider on a nearby windowsill. “I said some things. To Livvie. Things I shouldn’t have said.”
“I know.”
Of course she knew.
“I don’t know how to fix it,” he said.