Chapter 36
Rebecca woke before the sun was fully up. For a second she didn’t remember why her pillow had something crinkling beneath it, but then her hand found the envelope and everything returned in a quiet rush. The broken frame, the letter, her mother’s words.
She switched on the bedside lamp. The room glowed soft gold in the still-weak morning light.
She felt the way she used to back in school, when she had read something she loved and she couldn’t get it out of her head, as if she were inhabiting an entirely new world.
But now the things she was excited about were in her own life, the real world.
She was filled with the idea that she could write her own map.
That she was in charge. Somehow, she had lost sight of this.
In her desk drawer, she found a fresh composition notebook. She picked up a pen and wrote without thinking:
Things I Want Because I Want Them
She stared at the blank space beneath and felt a surprising lightness. Then she began the list.
Stay in Bramley Hollow a little longer—by my choice.
After she had this down, she opened her laptop and wrote an email to her supervising professor at the university firmly asking for an extension of her leave and indicating that she was at a crossroads, that they should have a conversation in the coming weeks about exactly what this meant.
It scared her to send the email, but she did it anyway.
And once it was sent, she didn’t feel scared anymore.
Keep the building, she wrote, her heart beginning to race again. Make it a community hub, the way the diner was, the same in so many ways, but also different. Books, warmth, fun, food—the way I imagined it when I was a kid.
Talk to Sabrina, she added. Make a plan together.
Then, just for fun, she started to sketch, the way she had as a child, but different—more certain, even if she was only exploring.
Somehow, every pen stroke made it feel more real.
She sketched the front room: shelves along the north wall; a reading nook where the sun pooled in the afternoon; a kitchen that still served delicious food—perhaps, if Sabrina was involved, more adventurous than the food the diner had offered.
She wrote “bookstore–café/restaurant” in the margin and circled it, hard enough to dent the page.
Then she opened a spreadsheet and named it “Blackbird she was on her own.
Her savings account wasn’t robust, her plan needed work—but she felt calm and centered in a way that she hadn’t in a long time.
Maybe ever. She read, she wrote. Lists, journal entries, observations.
She reread her mother’s letter so many times she knew it by heart.
On Thursday morning, she awoke almost certain that Cort was in bed with her, left over from a dream she must have been having. It hurt, and she sat with it for a moment. She wanted to open a door between them. “But how?” she whispered into the silence.
There was no answer.
Rebecca went to her bookshelf and slid out one of her old diaries, the one she had written when she was seventeen.
She sat on the bed and she read her tortured words about Cort.
She knew the young woman who had written those words so well in some ways, but in other ways she couldn’t be further away from who she had been.
She missed Cort, still. It was as Sabrina had said: It didn’t feel over.
What if she reached out? What would she say?
She closed the journal and picked up her phone.
It was Thursday. The Autumn Festival would start the next day, with the hay maze opening, shops each having special promotions, displays and tables outside, food trucks and vendors in the town square, and, in the evening, the vegetable-judging contest she knew Cort would be busy preparing for.
But still, she called up his contact card and typed out a text. See you at the dance?
She hoped he’d remember saying that to her, a long time ago.
Then, as soon as she sent it, she felt sudden regret.
Would he think she was trying to dig at him, to recall a time that had hurt them both?
She hadn’t meant it like that. She had meant it as a new beginning.
An opening for a thaw. Because she wanted Cort Adams in her life in some way.
Especially if she was going to stay here.
She couldn’t avoid him forever. She didn’t want to.
The ellipsis that indicated that Cort was typing appeared and reappeared so many times she began to regret her text even more. But then the words Definitely. See you there appeared and her heart lifted, just enough.
Downstairs, Rebecca propped the diner door open to let in the cool morning air and swept the front step, the broom making that satisfying shushing sound across old wood.
She imagined what it might feel like to be opening her bookstore café, and her heart lifted, just as much as it had at the idea of seeing Cort at the dance, and of things somehow being okay between them again.
When she knew the hardware store would be open, she walked toward it, to get a new piece of glass for the framed photo of her mother. She felt proud of herself for fixing the photo, even if it was just a small victory.
Instead of bringing it upstairs again, she put the photo on a diner shelf and resolved that it would stay there, always.
Back at the counter, she pressed her palms to the cool laminate and let herself imagine the room full of small sounds. Pages turning, spoons on saucers, a child giggling at a dog under a table.
People she knew, and people she didn’t.
Her phone chimed and her heart skipped a beat.
It wasn’t Cort, but in a way, it was better.
It was an email from her supervisor telling her the extension was approved and suggesting some meeting times for the following week.
She typed a quick reply, sent it, and stood in the silence that followed.
All at once, it was as if a voice spoke to her in the quiet of the diner.
A voice she had never heard before, but a voice she knew.
Go meet your life.
It was Evie’s voice, finally. She had been waiting her entire life to hear her mother speak. And now she knew she really was home.