Chapter 13 #2
I didn’t know that was possible, to meet someone and have them change the way everything looks.
The marsh, the fairy lights, the sound of your laughter through a wall, a crossword grid, a cookie jar with a crooked beak.
I can’t look at any of that without seeing you.
Your father wrote that W. Elliott understood how his brain worked.
I read that note and it nearly broke me apart because the truth is, I never really thought about who was on the other side of my puzzles.
I built walls out of words and then hid behind them and told myself that anonymity was important, but it wasn’t.
The anonymity was just my shield, my armor.
Your father saw through it the same way that you did, with curiosity and patience and the kind of attention that most people don’t bother giving.
So I can’t promise you that I won’t get scared again.
I can’t promise you that I won’t try to hide.
But I’m not going to hide from you, not anymore.
The crossword said STAY.
I meant it, and I still mean it.
Grant.
He folded the letter into thirds and held it for a moment.
This piece of paper contained more of himself than anything else he’d ever published.
He had more honesty in that little piece of paper than forty million downloads of an app.
He slipped it into the envelope.
On the front, in his careful handwriting, he wrote her name.
He didn’t deliver the letter himself.
It wasn’t because he was hiding.
He was done with that.
But because he knew that Liza needed space.
So showing up at her door with a letter would just be another way of him making her respond on his timeline instead of hers.
Instead, he took the letter to Dixie.
She was at her house on the porch drinking coffee with her braced wrist resting on the armrest.
She saw him walking up and looked at him with those sharp blue eyes.
“Sit down,” she said.
He sat.
“I take it that’s for her?”
She nodded at the envelope.
“Yes.”
“Did you write it by hand?”
“Yes.”
“In blue ink?”
He looked at her.
“How did you…”
“Honey, I’ve been watching you for two weeks. I know about those margin notes. I know about the crossword at the marsh. I’m old, for sure, but not oblivious.”
She held out her good hand.
“Well, go ahead. Give it here.”
He handed her the envelope.
She looked at the name on the front.
“Did you turn down the deal?”
“Yep. This morning.”
She nodded.
“Well, that’s a good start.”
She tucked the letter into her apron pocket.
“I’ll give it to her this afternoon. But, Grant…”
“Yeah?”
“I’m telling you, this letter better be good because that girl is worth all the best words you’ve got.”
“I know.”
“Well, go on then. I’ll handle this part.”
He stood up.
He turned around at the end of the porch.
“Dixie?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For all of it. The cookies, the matchmaking, and I guess just the way you let people land here and become your family.”
She waved him off with her good hand.
“Get out of here before you make me cry. I’ve got a reputation to keep.”
Dixie took the letter to the bookstore at four o’clock.
Liza was behind the counter handling a return.
Dixie walked in, put the envelope on the counter without saying a word, and walked right back out.
The bell chimed twice, once on the way in, once on the way out.
And then the store was completely quiet.
Liza looked down at the envelope.
It was her name in Grant’s handwriting, blue ink.
She picked it up and could feel the weight of it.
Not the physical weight, but the other kind, the weight of someone who had written words straight to her, and meant them.
She opened it.
She stood there reading it, standing behind the counter in the middle of the afternoon.
She read it once quickly, and then again more slowly.
When she reached I associate all beautiful things with you, she put her hand over her mouth.
The words blurred.
She blinked and cleared her eyes and kept reading. Stopping wasn’t an option. Not now.
I can’t promise you that I won’t get scared again. I can’t promise you that I won’t try to hide.
She set the letter on the counter and put both of her palms flat against the wood.
Her eyes were wet.
Something in her chest that had been clenched for days was slowly unclenching.
Not all at once, but the way a fist opens when it finally decides it doesn’t need to be a fist anymore.
He had turned down the deal.
He had chosen the island and the shop and the porch step.
He’d written it in blue ink in careful handwriting and sent it through Dixie, probably because he didn’t want to pressure her.
And that, more than the letter, told her that he meant it.
That he had the patience and restraint to let her make her own decision.
When she finished, she held the letter against her chest the way that she had held her father’s crossword book.
She stood there for a long time.
And then, finally, Liza Forrester, who had come to the island broken and hiding and unsure of who she was, held the letter written in blue ink by a man who had finally decided to stop hiding too.
But she didn’t go to him, not immediately.
She needed a moment to breathe.
So she set the letter on her nightstand next to her father’s book and slept better than she had in days.