Chapter Thirty-Seven
Lucy
I wake before my alarm.
Normally, I reach for a book. Instead, I simply lie here, watching as ribbons of early sunlight stretch across my bedroom ceiling.
Everything is exactly the same. Light walls. Overflowing bookshelf beside my bed. The stack of library books on my nightstand waiting to be returned. The framed picture of Mom smiling up at the camera with flour dusted across the front of her apron.
Nothing has changed.
Yet, somehow, everything has.
I throw the covers back and pad barefoot across the hardwood floor, pulling open the curtains.
Willow Creek is just beginning to wake up.
Mr. Jensen is already watering the flowers outside his house.
Mrs. Alvarez walks her golden retriever down Maple Street, just like she has every morning for as long as I can remember.
A delivery truck rumbles past.
If I open my bedroom window, I know I’d probably catch the faint smell of fresh bread drifting through the neighborhood.
I rest my forehead against the cool glass.
When I was little, I thought the world started here. Then, I grew older and decided it ended here.
Neither was true.
Willow Creek was never my entire story. It’s simply where the first chapters were written.
A quiet knock sounds against my bedroom door.
“Come in,” I say.
Dad peeks inside. “Morning.”
“Morning.”
He studies me for a second before smiling. “You look different.”
I laugh. “I probably need to brush my hair.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “That’s not it.”
He leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms. “You look…” He searches for the word. “Lighter.”
I don’t answer right away. Because he’s right.
The knot that’s lived somewhere beneath my ribs for months is gone.
Not because every question has been answered.
Not because every fear has disappeared.
But because I’m finally done carrying the ones that were never mine to begin with.
Dad nods toward the window. “Mind if I steal you for breakfast?”
I glance back outside one more time.
The future feels bigger than everything I’ve been afraid to leave behind.
I smile.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’d like that.”
The smell of bacon fills the house before I even round the corner, followed by the familiar hiss of pancake batter meeting a hot griddle.
“How hungry are you?” Dad asks.
“Very hungry,” I say.
He slides a plate onto the table, his red hair sticking out in a million different directions.
I wrap my hands around the warm mug of coffee waiting for me, and watch him move around the kitchen with practiced ease. Wearing a faded Willow Creek baseball shirt he’s probably owned longer than I’ve been alive, he hums quietly to himself as he flips another pancake.
“You’ve smiled more in the last twenty-four hours than you have in the last five months.”
I laugh into my coffee. “Is it that obvious?”
“To everyone except you.”
He carries another plate to the table before settling into the chair across from me.
For a few minutes, we eat in comfortable silence. It reminds me of yesterday with Dylan.
Maybe silence doesn’t always mean something is wrong.
Sometimes, it means you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.
Dad sets his fork down. “I saw Dylan yesterday.”
My eyes widen. “You did?”
“He stopped by while you and Mom were helping Joss clean out her catering van last night,” he divulges.
I can’t hide my surprise. “What did he say?”
“He thanked me.”
“For what?” I laugh nervously.
Dad smiles to himself. “For raising a woman worth coming back for.”
Emotion catches unexpectedly in my throat. “He didn’t have to do that.”
“No,” Dad agrees. “He didn’t.”
“I’m glad he did.”
His smile fades into something softer. “You know, your mom and I… we used to worry about you. That we spent so much time trying to protect you from getting hurt that we accidentally taught you to be afraid of living.”
I stare down at my plate. “I don’t think you did.”
“I hope we didn’t,” Dad says as he reaches across the table and pats my hand.
“Your mom always used to tell me that you didn’t belong to us.
Not really. You belong to yourself. Our job was to take care of you until you were ready to decide who you wanted to be.
Where you want to be. The life you want to live. ”
“That sounds like her.”
Dad nods. “What’s next, Lu-Lu Bear?”
“I applied for that publishing internship in California,” I tell Dad. “The one I was too afraid to mention.”
His eyebrows lift. “And?”
“They offered it to me.”
Dad smiles. “Whatever happens, Lu-Lu Bear, this home will always be somewhere you can return to if you ever need it.”
My eyes sting. “Dad…”
“Go live your life, Lucy,” he says, the words catching in his throat. “I want that for you.”
I let his words settle over me.
For so long, I thought I was waiting for someone to tell me it was okay to want more than the life I’ve always imagined. But sitting here now, I realize I never needed permission. I only needed to believe I was allowed to choose for myself.
I wish I had figured that out sooner.
When breakfast is over, I carry my plate to the sink before reaching for my purse.
The worn copy of Lady Susan peeks out from the top.
Dad notices immediately. “Library?”
I nod. “Yeah. One last stop.”
He smiles and somehow, he knows exactly what I mean.
***
The glass doors slide open as I walk into the library.
It still smells of old paper and polished wood. Sunlight pours in through the tall front windows, stretching across the worn hardwood floors. A summer school student sleeps in the reading corner with a book resting on his chest.
It almost feels like I never left.
“Well,” a familiar voice says. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to say goodbye.”
I smile as Ms. Thorn stands behind the circulation desk, her reading glasses perched low on her nose.
“Of course, you knew I’d come.”
She chuckles softly. “You always return your books.”
I pull Lady Susan from my bag and slide it across the counter to her. “I do.”
She rests her hand on the worn cover for a moment before looking at me. “So…”
“So?”
“What did you think?”
I shrug. “You’ve been waiting to ask me that since you handed it to me.”
“I absolutely have.”
“I think…” I pause, searching for the right words. “I spent most of the book trying to decide whether Susan was brave or just afraid.”
“And?”
“I think she confused control with courage.”
Ms. Thorn grins. “I was hoping you would say that.”
She stamps the inside cover before shelving it on the cart beside her.
“Do you know why I gave you this one?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No.”
“Some of us spend so much time trying to avoid making someone else’s mistakes that we end up making entirely different ones. You’ve been so afraid of losing yourself in someone else’s story that you almost convinced yourself not to write your own.”
The words linger quietly between us.
She’s right.
“I thought choosing love meant giving something up.”
“It often does,” Ms. Thorn says gently.
I frown. “Yeah.”
“Sometimes, it asks us to give up fear.”
Silence fills the space between us. Not awkward. Comfortable. The kind of silence only libraries seem to understand.
I look around, trying to hold every familiar detail at once.
The shelves.
The tables.
The windows where afternoon light always seemed just a little warmer.
“This place was my safe harbor,” I say.
“I should hope so.”
I laugh softly. “I don’t know who I’d be without it.”
Ms. Thorn sighs. “You don’t have to. You’ve known for a while. You just finally believe her.”
“Her?”
“The girl you’ve been becoming.”
“What if I come back?”
She raises an eyebrow. “I really hope you do.”
“No,” I laugh through the sting behind my eyes. “I mean… what if California doesn’t feel like home?”
Ms. Thorn walks around the desk and stands in front of me.
She pulls me into a hug. “My dear…” She squeezes my shoulders gently before stepping back. “Leaving a place doesn’t erase what it gave you. You carry that into whatever you build next.”
I swallow hard. “And I think…”
“It’s time you start writing yours,” she finishes.
Sunlight spills over the floor, stretching all the way to the entrance.
For years, I’ve walked through these doors looking for stories that might help me understand my life.
Today, I think I’m ready to go live one.
“I think it’s time I went to California,” I tell Ms. Thorn.
She smiles. “I think so, too.”
***
Three weeks later… after graduation, tearful goodbyes, and more cardboard boxes than I knew I owned…
California is louder than Willow Creek.
The traffic.
The ocean.
The steady hum of airplanes somewhere overhead.
Even the sunlight feels different here.
Sharper.
Warmer.
New.
It’s been three weeks since I stepped off that plane with two suitcases, one box of books, and absolutely no idea what I was doing. Only that I start at a small publishing house on Monday. The position is temporary. But for once, the unknown feels like possibility instead of danger.
Moving in with Dylan this quickly was not the careful plan either of us expected. So, we signed a six-month lease, agreed to keep talking if things feel difficult, and promised that neither of us was trapped if California stopped feeling right.
I bring the coffee mug up to my lips and take a sip as I look out the apartment window.
Palm trees sway outside instead of oak trees.
The smell of saltwater drifts through the cracked balcony door instead of fresh-cut grass.
Different.
Not better.
“Morning,” I hear as the apartment door opens behind me.
I glance over my shoulder. Dylan drops his gym bag beside the couch before crossing the room.
“Morning,” I say as he leans down and kisses the top of my head the way he always does now.
No panic.
No doubt.
Just the quiet relief of seeing him come home.
“How was your workout?” I ask him.
“It was good.” He runs his fingers through my hair. “Working already?” he asks.
“A little.”
He looks toward my laptop. The cursor blinks patiently on an otherwise blank page. “Did Chapter One finally win the argument?”
I laugh. “It put up a fight.”
“I figured.”
He disappears into the kitchen, humming to himself, completely unaware that he still makes me smile every time he walks through the front door and comes home to me.
“You want breakfast?”
“In a minute,” I call over my shoulder.
“Take your time.”
He doesn’t ask what I’m writing. He doesn’t read over my shoulder. He simply trusts that if I want to share it, I will.
I turn back to the screen. The cursor blinks. Waiting.
I used to think courage looked like boarding airplanes and leaving home and falling in love.
Now, I think courage is much quieter than that. I think it looks like trusting yourself enough to write the first sentence.
“Still ready for your first day Monday?” Dylan asks from the kitchen.
“I’m ready,” I say.
Then, I rest my fingers on the keyboard. Outside, California stretches endlessly beyond the apartment window. But inside, home hums softly in the kitchen as Dylan starts the blender.
I take a deep breath, then begin.
Chapter One.
The day my car broke down, a boy in a football jersey knocked on my window and changed my life.
I pause.
Read the sentence.
Once. Twice.
Then, I laugh to myself.
“No,” I whisper.
I hold down the backspace key until every word disappears.
Because that isn’t where my story began. Not really.
I close my eyes for a moment before typing again.
This time, the words come easier.
Every story asks something of its heroine. Mine asked me to stop mistaking fear for safety.
I smile as the cursor drops to the next line.
Then the next.
And the next.