Chapter 12 #3
A pause in the typing. “Okay.”
“There’s leftover soup in the fridge. And the scone—”
“Got it. Thanks.”
She waited for more. For him to look up, to smile, to acknowledge what had passed between them at the kitchen table. “Don’t stay up too late.”
The typing resumed. She should probably do a victory pump. Instead, she quietly let herself out.
Aunt Lila’s cottage was warm with lamplight, the smell of turpentine and tea mingling in the air. Livvie found her aunt in the sunroom studio, perched on a stool before an easel, a half-finished illustration glowing under the work light.
“There you are.” Lila didn’t look up from her brushwork. “How’s our author?”
“Writing. In fact, he’s on a hot streak.” Livvie sank into the worn armchair by the window, her spot now after more than a week of evenings spent exactly like this. “He figured something out. About his character. About himself, I think.”
“That’s how it works.” Lila added a delicate line to whatever she was painting—a children’s book, something with rabbits and autumn leaves. “The story teaches you what you need to learn. If you’re brave enough to let it.”
Livvie pulled her phone from her pocket, looked at the email she’d sent earlier. The young writer. Nora Whitcomb. The words she’d offered so casually, not realizing how much they might mean.
“Lila?”
“Mmm?”
“Something happened today.” She told her aunt about the email. The girl who’d felt seen. The request to be her agent. The response she’d sent, offering help she wasn’t sure she had the right to offer.
Lila listened without interrupting, brush moving steadily.
When Livvie finished, her aunt set down the brush and turned to face her.
“You’re so good with people,” she said. “Have you ever thought about being an agent?”
Livvie shook her head immediately. “No. I’m not—I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not a shark.” The word tasted bitter. “My parents always said you have to be aggressive to succeed. Cutthroat. That’s what it takes. And I’m just…not that. I never have been.”
Lila was quiet for a long moment. Outside the window, the last light was fading from the lake, turning the water from gold to silver to deep blue.
“My agent,” she said finally, “was one of the kindest people I ever knew.”
Livvie looked up.
“Her name was Margaret. She found me at a conference when I was twenty-six—I’d just had my third rejection, I was ready to quit, and she walked up to my table and said, ‘I see what you’re trying to do.
Let me help.’” Lila smiled at the memory.
“She wasn’t a shark. She never yelled at editors or played hardball with contracts.
She just…saw people. Saw what they were trying to create and helped them get there. ”
“What happened to her?”
“She retired. Twelve years ago.” Lila’s voice was soft.
“That’s when she handed me over to the agent I used to share with Nate.
But I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to write without her.
She’d been such a big part of my creative life—every book, every revision, every moment of doubt, she was there. And without her…”
She trailed off. In the silence, Livvie heard her own heartbeat.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted,” Lila said quietly. “That’s what Margaret used to say. Psalm thirty-four. She’d tell me that whenever I was struggling, whenever the work felt impossible. ‘He’s close right now. Closer than you know.’”
Livvie’s eyes stung.
“I didn’t believe her at first,” Lila continued. “After your mother died, I was so angry. At God, at the world. But Margaret was right. God was there. In the grief, in the healing, in the slow return of the desire to make beautiful things. He was there the whole time.”
She reached out and took Livvie’s hand.
“We need people in our lives who leave an impact. People who help us become who we’re meant to be.
That’s what Margaret did for me. What your mom did for me.
And from what you’ve told me, that’s what you’re doing for that young writer.
And especially for Nate.” A pause. “It’s not about being a shark, sweetheart.
It’s about seeing people. Really seeing them. And helping them find their voice.”
Livvie couldn’t speak. Her eyes burned, tears pressing against her eyes.
“You not only could do that,” Lila said. “You already are.”
The thought landed in her chest and took root.
She looked out the window, toward Nate’s cottage. Through the trees, the light from his window burned, a warm glow in the gathering dark. He was still in there. Still writing. Still facing the grief he’d been running from for three years.
Maybe it wasn’t about getting him to turn in pages. It was about him journeying through the story. Not just the story he was writing but the one he was also living. “Lila?”
“Yes?”
“How did you start again? After Mom died. How did you find your way back?”
Her aunt turned quiet for a moment, looking at her own painting. The rabbits, the autumn leaves, the world she’d created out of nothing.
“I remembered why I started in the first place,” she said.
“Not for the money or the recognition or the career. I started because I loved making beautiful things. Because stories matter. Because somewhere, a child would hold a book I’d illustrated and feel less alone in the world.
” She smiled. “I had to remember that I was writing for the children who needed the stories as much as I needed to tell them.”
Livvie thought about Emma and the stories she’d left behind, and the children who still needed them.
And she thought about the Storybook Corner—the dragon with the knowing eyes, the egg about to hatch, the forest full of hidden wonders. Emma’s dream, coming to life under Livvie’s hands.
“He needs to see it,” she said slowly. “Nate. He needs to see that his words matter. That people care about the stories—not just Emma’s stories, but his. That there are readers out there who need what only he can give them.”
“How do you show someone that?”
Livvie didn’t know. Not yet. But looking at Nate’s light burning in the darkness, yeah, she was going to figure it out.
Nate looked up and three hours had disappeared.
The chapter was finished. The fire was ash. The candle had burned down to a pool of wax, the smell of cedar and clove faded to something faintly burnt. And the couch where Livvie had been reading was empty—blanket folded, her warmth long gone.
She’d said good night. He remembered that now, her soft voice. Don’t stay up too late.
Oops. It was past midnight.
He saved the document. Leaned back. The chair creaked, his spine protesting hours of stillness. The laptop screen glowed in the dark room—the only light, he realized. At some point, the sun had set and he hadn’t noticed. At some point, she’d left and he’d barely looked up.
He should have looked up.
He’d logged a solid ten thousand words. Two full chapters. At this pace—a chapter every day or two—he’d have the book finished in a week. The realization should have lifted the boulder in his chest. Instead, the weight burned deeper, tangled up with something he didn’t want to examine.
A week. Maybe less.
And then she’d go back to New York.
A quietness had settled over the house in a way he hated a little. No soft sounds from the kitchen. No pages turning, no red pen scratching, no humming he’d pretended to find annoying. Just the dogs snoring and the terrible silence of a room that had been full and wasn’t anymore.
He got up. His bones had turned to concrete, now shooting pins and needles as blood returned. The coffee she’d brought him hours ago sat cold on his desk, and he drank it anyway, grimacing at the bitter dregs.
The couch still held the shape of her. The blanket she’d used was folded over the arm—she’d done that before she left, tidied up after herself the way she always did. The manuscript pages she’d been reading were stacked on the side table, her red pen laid across the top.
He found himself crossing to the kitchen without deciding to. Her mug was in the sink. A faint trace of lipstick on the rim—that soft pink she’d been wearing.
He turned away. The window pulled him—the darkness beyond, the need to know if she was still awake. He walked to the window that overlooked her aunt’s house and pressed his forehead against the cold.
The fog had cleared while he was writing. The lake stretched out silver-black under a scattering of stars, mirror-still, reflecting the sky so perfectly it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. The dock was a dark line into nothing. The far shore was just a suggestion.
And through the trees to the right—
Lila’s cottage. A single light on.
Her window.
He stood there, breath fogging the pane, and watched that light like it was the only thing tethering him to the world.
She was awake. Reading, maybe. Or lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.
He didn’t let himself finish that thought.
Still…did she think about him too? The question surfaced without permission. He’d spent three years not wanting anything. Safer that way. Wanting things meant losing things, and he’d already lost enough.
But the story was pulling him forward now. The characters were demanding their ending. And he wanted to give it to them—not because of Richard, not because of the advance, not because of the lake house.
Because he wanted to know how the story ended.
Because he needed to know if there might be a happy ending waiting.
He turned from the window. Paced the living room. The dogs didn’t stir. They were used to his late nights, his restless wandering, his inability to settle.
The pacing took him down the hallway without his permission. His feet knew where they were going before his mind caught up.
Emma’s door.
Ajar. He didn’t remember leaving it open, but maybe he had.
He entered the room.
Moonlight through lace curtains cast silver patterns on the floor. The purple notebook, the one with the coffee stain, sat on the nightstand. He picked it up, flipped through the pages.