Chapter 7
Noah
I finally listened to Dana's voicemail.
Number sixteen.
No, seriously.
Sixteen.
The first fifteen I had saved without listening to them—a habit I had developed in graduate school when avoiding calls from my advisor had become a survival strategy and which apparently was still embedded in my system regardless of professional consequences.
Number sixteen arrived this morning, and there was something in it—a shift in tone, barely perceptible—that suggested we had moved from frustrated editor territory into genuinely concerned human being territory.
Dana had worked with me for ten years.
I listened.
"Noah. This is voicemail number sixteen, and I'm counting because I want you to know I'm committed.
Listen—I don't need pages right now. I just need...
an email. One line. 'I'm okay and I'm writing.
' That's it. We don't need to talk about your father.
You don't need to explain anything. One line. Please."
I put the phone down.
A minute later, I opened my email and typed:
I'm okay and I'm writing.
Sent.
Then, because it was true and Dana deserved to know why:
Wren Falls, Vermont. Not sure why I came here. Maybe something is working. 14,000 words. Real ones.
Sent.
I set the phone down.
Opened the laptop.
Looked at those 14,000 words—actually looked at them, scrolling through them the way you look at something you created while you weren't paying attention and try to figure out how it got there.
It was different.
Different from my other books.
Those had been literary, controlled, every sentence a conscious decision.
This one was looser.
More interior.
There was a character who worked in a bookshop and another who didn't know what he was writing.
Both of them were trying to say something they had never said before.
I knew exactly where it was coming from.
I specifically did not think about that.
I closed the laptop.
Stretched.
Looked outside.
Gray morning.
Light rain.
That specific Wren Falls quality of quiet that felt layered rather than empty.
I picked up my phone.
I should probably do something productive.
Research, technically.
The new manuscript was set in a world I didn't properly know—a bookshop, a small town, a woman with strong opinions about books.
I decided I should actually read what readers read.
Real readers.
Real opinions.
Not reviews in literary journals.
Actual people talking about actual books.
So I searched her book videos.
This was a mistake.
No—that wasn't the right word.
This was a rabbit hole.
A deeply specific and surprisingly compelling rabbit hole.
The first three videos felt generic.
Enthusiastic.
Well-meaning.
Talking about books as though they were old friends.
Then I noticed the algorithm repeatedly steering me toward one specific account.
Again and again.
Username: @chapterandvine_ellie
I stopped.
Chapter and Vine.
The name of the bookshop.
The first video:
Ellie, slightly off-center in the frame, the bookshop behind her—the shelves I now recognized, that particular warm lighting.
She didn't look professional.
She was just talking.
"Okay, so I know I promised last week that I wasn't going to recommend a sad book, and then I immediately recommended a sad book, and I'm not apologizing because that book was incredible and if you cried, that was a feature, not a bug."
Pause.
"Today's recommendation: The Long Way Round by Cassie Mercer.
Small press, 2019, almost nobody has read it.
It's about a woman who completes her best friend's road trip after her death.
It's about grief, but it's actually about hope, and the ending haunted me for a week and I want it to haunt you too. "
I accidentally liked the video while scrolling.
Unliked it.
Then liked it again because unliking it felt petty.
The next video:
She was holding a romance novel.
Bright cover.
Obviously popular.
"Yes, I read romance. No, I'm not defensive about it. Yes, its better written than literary fiction gets credit for, and if you'd like to argue with me, meet me in the comments and I will educate you."
Then she launched into an actual review.
A real review.
Specific.
With page numbers.
Which scenes worked and why.
Which emotional moments missed the landing?
This wasn't casual.
This was genuinely analytical.
I kept scrolling.
This was bad.
I knew it was bad.
This was me scrolling through videos made by a woman who lived under the same roof as me and who was already occupying more mental space than was professional or reasonable.
But it was research.
Technically.
The seventh video featured one of my books.
My book.
The Space between Rooms.
My third novel.
The one that felt most difficult to me personally because it had been my first attempt to write about my father without actually writing about him.
"Okay," she said. "Controversial opinion incoming, and I'm prepared for the consequences."
I held the phone a little straighter.
"Noah Calloway is a talented writer. The sentences are genuinely beautiful. The structure is impeccable. And this novel left me approximately completely cold."
Pause.
She looked directly into the camera with the expression I recognized from real life.
Direct.
Slightly challenging.
"And I think I know why. This book is written about grief as though grief is a concept rather than a feeling.
Every emotional moment is immediately qualified.
It's as though the writer was afraid that if he actually let the character break apart—on the page, in front of the reader—it would take something from him that he could never get back. "
I put the phone down.
Picked it up again.
"And I'm not saying that to be cruel. I'm saying it because I think I understand what that feels like—to be that close to something and still maintain a safe distance. It's exhausting. And I think Calloway is exhausted."
I closed the video.
Sat there for three minutes.
Then went back and watched the rest.
"So, would I recommend it? Yes. Is it his best work? No. Do I think one day he's going to write something that completely breaks me? Yes. I'm waiting. And when he does, I'll be the first person here to say I told you so."
The video ended.
I was alone in an apartment in Wren Falls, Vermont, and I had fourteen thousand words that—if I was honest with myself, which was becoming increasingly difficult to avoid—felt for the first time like I was actually breaking apart on the page.
And she was downstairs.
She was downstairs, and I knew that.
And she didn't know that I knew.
And she didn't know I was watching her videos in the first place.
And she definitely didn't know that something she had said three years ago was still moving around inside me today.
It's as though the writer was afraid that if he actually let the character break apart, it would take something from him that he could never get back.
My father had once told me—when I was very young, maybe five or six—that strong people don't cry.
Exactly that.
Strong people don't cry, Noah.
As though it was wisdom.
As though he was giving me something.
I had technically spent my entire career trying to unlearn that sentence.
Apparently not on the page.
I opened my laptop.
Scrolled through the fourteen thousand words.
Not to edit them.
Just to look.
I reread chapter three, where my character talked about his father for the first time.
And I realized, reading it fresh, that the scene immediately qualified itself.
The character pulled back.
Maintained a safe distance.
I deleted it.
Rewrote it.
Let the character break apart.
Actually.
On the page.
In front of the reader.
It was physically uncomfortable.
It was exactly the feeling I avoided for this reason.
Exposed.
Undefended.
As though I had opened my chest and placed the contents on the table.
I wrote.
When I finally stopped, my hands were shaking slightly.
A meaningless physiological response.
I ignored it.
Word count:
16,847.
I saved the document.
Downstairs, the sounds of the bookshop closing drifted upward.
Lights switching off in sequence.
The lock turning.
Ellie's coat.
Keys.
Pause.
Then, clearly, her voice.
She was talking to herself, or maybe on the phone.
I couldn't hear the words.
Only the rhythm.
Then the door.
Then quiet.
I waited three minutes.
Went downstairs.
Kitchen.
Mug.
Coffee—cold, which was fine.
I walked past the counter.
That drawer.
The shallow one beneath it.
I didn't open it.
But I noticed, as I had before, that the drawer sat at a slightly different angle than it had that morning.
Which meant she had used it today.
Which meant the notebook was inside.
Which meant she was writing.
I put the mug in the sink.
Rinsed it.
Went back upstairs.
Opened the laptop.
Started a new document.
Blank.
After a long time, I typed:
You're waiting for something that will break you.
So am I.
I closed the file.
Never opened it again.
But I never deleted it, either.