Chapter 1 #2
That was the thing about Dixie. For all her outgoing nature and bluster, she had a way of going quiet at exactly the right moments. Like she could hear the things people just weren’t ready to say out loud.
She didn’t push. She just took another sip of her tea and said, “Well, we sure are glad to have you. I tell you, this old bookstore could use some young energy.”
“I’m thirty-two. I don’t know how young that really is anymore,” Liza said, chuckling.
“Oh, sugar, when you’re my age, thirty-two is basically a fetus.”
Liza looked at the storefront next to the bookstore. The last time she’d been here, that store had been a gift shop. But now the windows had brown paper over them, and a little sign on the door read “The Puzzle Post: Opening Soon.”
“Hey, what’s going on over there next door?”
Dixie barely even looked over. “Oh, some guy rented that space. Apparently, he sells brain games, puzzles, and whatnot. He’s as quiet as a church mouse. I’ve brought him cookies three different times. And you know what? He’s eaten exactly zero of them from what I can tell.”
“Well, maybe he just doesn’t like cookies.”
Dixie looked at her like she had just suggested that the earth was flat. “Honey, everybody likes cookies.”
The apartment above the bookstore was small but clean. Nobody had inhabited it for years, according to Dixie. It was a place they had used for storage until very recently.
There was one bedroom, a kitchenette, and a bathroom with a claw-foot tub that had seen way better days. There were French doors that opened onto a narrow balcony overlooking the town square.
Dixie had put out fresh towels and a Mason jar with wildflowers on the nightstand.
Liza unpacked slowly, which was pretty unusual for her. She had a type-A personality and usually tore through a suitcase like a tornado, dealing with the mess later on.
But tonight, she took her time, hanging things up, folding them, and putting them into the little dresser drawers that creaked when she opened them.
Maybe it was the quiet. Charleston had never felt this quiet to her. There was always something going on, but not in Seagrove. People seemed to appreciate the quiet here.
The last thing she unpacked was the box.
She sat on the edge of the bed and opened it. There were exactly eleven crossword puzzle books inside, stacked very neatly. Some of them had coffee rings on the covers, but most of them just had bent spines from being held open too long.
All of them were filled with her father’s handwriting. Blue ink, always blue, with the occasional margin note where he’d written something to nobody in particular.
This was a tricky one today.
Ha ha, got you.
Wow, this creator is a genius. I’d love to meet him someday.
That one was in the book that was on top, written right next to the crossword by someone named W. Elliott.
Her father had circled the byline twice.
David Forrester had done a crossword puzzle every Saturday morning for just about as long as Liza could remember. He would sit at their kitchen table with his cup of black coffee and his beloved blue pen and work through the whole thing before anyone else was even awake.
He said it was his meditation. His church.
He’d been gone about two years now. Brain aneurysm. Very quick. Very final.
On a Tuesday afternoon in October, Liza had gotten the call while she was sitting in a conference room listening to somebody pitch something for a dog food company.
She had gotten up and walked out mid-sentence and then didn’t go back for three days.
She put the book on the nightstand next to the wildflowers and then ran her thumb along the spine.
“I miss you so much, Dad,” she whispered.
Julie sat at the kitchen table at the inn with her laptop and a half-eaten granola bar. Her to-do list lay on the table, and it had somehow grown to three pages.
Finish Chapter 12, whether you think it’s good or not.
Call the linen supplier.
Email Colleen back about the baby’s doctor appointment.
Confirm the date of the festival committee meeting.
Help Dixie with inventory.
Call Dylan’s coach about camp.
Order new welcome binders for the guest rooms.
Return a call from the woman who wanted to book a wedding in September.
Figure out why the porch light keeps flickering.
She rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock. It was after nine. She had meant to stop working at seven and sit on the porch with Dawson. But that was hours ago, she realized, as she stared at her cold cup of coffee.
The inn was quiet. The last guests had gone to bed, and the only sound was the hum of the dishwasher and the distant sound of the ocean.
She should have felt peaceful, but, instead, she felt like all she heard was a ticking clock.
Dawson walked into the kitchen and leaned against the counter. He had that look on his face, the one where he was trying to figure out how to say something to her without starting an argument. She’d been married to him long enough now to realize exactly what that look was.
“Julie.”
“Hm?”
“When was the last time you sat on the porch and did absolutely nothing?”
She didn’t look up. “Honey, I don’t have time to do nothing.”
“Well, that’s kind of my point.”
She looked over at him. He wasn’t angry. He was definitely worried. And that was almost worse, because she couldn’t argue with worry the same way she could argue with frustration.
“I’m fine, Dawson. You know, I just have a lot of stuff going on right now.”
“You’ve had a lot of stuff going on for about six months straight. Do you think maybe you’ve overextended yourself?”
She opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it because she knew he wasn’t wrong.
He walked over and squeezed her shoulders. “I’m looking into something that might help with all the inn stuff, so you can focus on writing.”
“What do you mean, looking into something?”
“You let me worry about that. In the meantime, please go get some sleep.”
She watched him walk out and then turned back to her laptop.
She stared at Chapter 12 for a long moment, the accusatory cursor blinking at the end of an unfinished sentence. The character on the page was standing at a crossroads, trying to decide whether to stay or go.
And Julie honestly had no idea which direction to send her.
She closed the laptop and added one more thing to her list.
Figure out how to be in two places at once.
It was almost eleven o’clock at night when Liza finally stepped out onto the balcony. The town square was pitch dark, except for the streetlights and the glow from a little seafood restaurant down the block that stayed open late.
Somewhere nearby, she could hear crickets that seemed to be putting in overtime. She leaned on the railing and breathed in the salt air. There wasn’t a car horn or a siren to be heard anywhere.
She knew this was temporary. She had to keep reminding herself of that. She had two weeks to help Dixie, and then she had to get back into the real world to figure out a direction, a career, and a reason to set an alarm in the morning.
She wasn’t staying here. Staying was what you did when you had something to stay for, and right now, all she had was herself and a stack of bills.
A light came on in the shop next door.
She tilted her head. It was past 11 p.m. on a Wednesday, so who in the world would be working at this hour?
Through the window, she could barely make out a figure moving behind the brown paper. He was tall and broad-shouldered, carrying something that looked like a box. He set it down and then stood still for a moment, as if he was deciding where everything should go.
She thought about how interesting it would be to set up a store and get to make all those choices at the beginning.
She lifted her hand and waved, but he didn’t wave back. Maybe he couldn’t see her through the paper. She waited another second, then shrugged and turned to go inside.
She supposed that some people were friendly and some weren’t, and she’d never had any trouble telling the difference, but she had also never had any trouble being the friendliest person in the room.
Tonight, she was just too tired to try.
She walked back inside, brushed her teeth, and climbed into the soft bed. The sheets smelled like lavender.
Before she turned off the lamp, she reached for the crossword puzzle book on the nightstand and opened it to a random page.
She found one of her father’s margin notes in blue ink that had faded a bit but was still legible.
W. Elliott, if you’re out there, you are the only person who might understand how my brain works.
She smiled, tracing the letters with her fingertip.
She then closed the book, turned off the light, and allowed Seagrove to pull her into a deep sleep.
Twenty feet away, through a shared wall, the light in The Puzzle Post stayed on for at least another hour.
***
Grant Whitmore had a system for unpacking his boxes. It had served him very well throughout four apartments, two storage units, and a cross-country move that he’d rather not think about.
Step one: Open the box. That seemed pretty simple.
Step two: Remove each item individually.
Step three: Hold the item in your hand and think about where it belongs, and then place it exactly in that spot.
Step four: Do not second-guess yourself.
Step five: Repeat.
His plan was methodical and calm, the opposite of how most people unpacked. Most normal people would dump everything on the floor and then spend the next three weeks stepping over it while pretending it didn't exist.
He’d been at this since six o’clock in the morning, and The Puzzle Post was starting to look like a store.
The front room had two long display tables that he’d built himself from some reclaimed wood and iron pipe legs he’d found.
One held rows of wooden tangram sets, each one in its own felt-lined box.
The other held crossword anthologies arranged by difficulty, brain-teaser kits with hand-drawn instructions, and a small collection of mechanical puzzle boxes that he had imported from a craftsman in Vermont.