Chapter 3 #2
The scavenger hunt. The way Liza’s brain worked so differently, messy and fast, and somehow exactly right. The sticky note she’d thrown at him. The way that she’d called his simple grid layout elegant, like it was something worth admiring.
Owen would have absolutely loved her.
The thought arrived in his brain the way it always did, sharp and uninvited.
He closed his eyes and saw the county fair.
He was twenty-two years old, sitting behind a folding table with a hand-drawn banner that said Puzzle Corner and a stack of printed crossword puzzles. He’d been way too nervous to talk to anybody. People would walk by and glance at the table and just keep going.
He’d been ready to pack up after an hour.
But then Owen showed up.
He’d driven three hours from Raleigh without telling Grant he was coming.
He walked up to the table, picked up one of the crosswords, and started waving it in the air like he was a carnival barker.
“Ladies and gentlemen, step right up. My little brother made these puzzles. They’re going to break your brain in the best possible way. And guess what? The first one’s free. And the second one costs you a smile.”
Grant had wanted to crawl under the table.
Within twenty minutes, there was a line.
Owen kept talking, pulling people in, slapping Grant on the back, and saying, “Tell them about the theme. Tell them about the hidden message.”
By the end of the day, they’d given away two hundred crosswords, and Grant had four emails from people who wanted to publish his work.
On the drive home, Owen looked over at him and said, “You make the magic, little brother, and I’ll make the noise. That’s how this will work.”
Grant opened his eyes.
He was sitting in his quiet shop, and the clue cards were still blank.
Oh, how he wished he could go back to those moments.
Liza’s energy echoed his brother’s so closely his chest went tight. Her big gestures, her easy warmth with strangers, the refusal to let the room stay quiet.
She wasn’t the same, of course. She wasn’t Owen. And he certainly wasn’t looking for a replacement for his brother.
But it was close enough to remind him of what he’d lost.
The last time he had let someone that bright into his life, the world had taken them away.
Julie was in the middle of editing a chapter when Dawson breezed into the kitchen and sat down across from her. He looked like a man who was about to confess something.
“Okay, what did you do?” she asked.
“Nothing bad.”
“Well, that’s exactly what somebody who did something bad would say.”
He smiled and folded his hands on the table in front of him. “I hired somebody for the inn, part-time.”
She pushed her laptop aside. “You hired someone?”
“Her name is Francine. She’s retired. Used to work in hospitality, high-end hotels. And she’s looking for something light, just a few days a week. She can handle the guest check-ins, some of the administrative stuff.”
Julie stared at him. Heat rose in her cheeks, and she couldn’t tell if it was anger or embarrassment.
“You hired somebody without talking to me first.”
“Julie, I tried to talk to you three times. You were on the phone or at the bookstore or working on your book, and I don’t blame you.”
“You should have tried a fourth time.”
Dawson leaned back in his chair and rubbed his jaw. He wasn’t a man who ever raised his voice. Julie sometimes found that more frustrating than if he just yelled. At least yelling gave you something to push back against.
“Honey, you’re running on empty. I can see it. Your girls can see it. Even Dixie called me last week and said she’s worried about you. I’m not trying to take something away from you. I’m trying to give you back the thing that you actually want to be doing.”
“And what’s that?”
“Writing. Being present. Not having to check your phone every three minutes at dinner.”
That one stung a bit because it was true. She had checked her phone at dinner last night, twice, during the salad.
She crossed her arms. “I don’t need help, Dawson.”
He stood up and kissed her forehead. “I know you don’t. But maybe you deserve it anyway.”
He left the kitchen, and she sat there a long time, staring at the place where he’d been sitting. Julie felt the particular sting of someone being right about something she wasn’t ready to hear.
The sun was going down when Grant carried his workbench stool out to the small porch in front of The Puzzle Post. It was still warm, but it was turning from day into evening, and the town square looked like something out of a painting. A tangerine sky, with the live oaks going dark against it.
He sat down with a grid sheet and pencil.
Designing crosswords had always been the thing that helped him quiet his mind.
He didn’t need to solve them. That was a different part of the brain.
Solving them was about logic, but designing them was about architecture, about building something someone else would inhabit.
He started with the theme answers, the long ones that would anchor the grid. Usually he started with a concept, like a hidden message or a pattern, but tonight he wasn’t thinking about themes.
He was thinking about that woman next door who’d thrown a sticky note at him as if they were old friends, who had talked about her dead father’s crossword habit with a smile that held mostly love and a little grief, who had walked through his carefully arranged shop like it was her own personal playground.
He wrote the first clue.
Disruptive force, four letters.
The answer was Liza.
And he stared at it even though it felt unbearable to look at.
He erased it, of course, until there was no trace of the letters left.
He wrote a different answer.
Gust.
That was better. Safe.
He kept working until the sky turned purple and street lamps flickered on.
Across the square, he saw a couple walking hand in hand toward the seafood restaurant. A kid rode by on a bicycle, hands in the air, the way kids do before they know better.
The bookstore lights were still on, and through the window he could see Liza moving around inside.
She was rearranging something.
In fact, she was always rearranging something.
If he wasn’t careful, she might just try to rearrange him.
He looked down at the crossword. His grid was taking shape. Clean, symmetrical, balanced.
Perfection.
He folded it and put it in his pocket, but he didn’t throw it away.
Owen’s voice floated through his head, the way it did sometimes at the end of the day, when the world had gotten quiet enough to hear the ghosts.
Stop hiding behind puzzles, little brother.
Grant went inside and locked the door.
But he left the porch light on.