Page 26 of Piece By Piece

“Do you want to leave them up? I mean, they look nice. If we’re going to do it again, it’s just less work.”

She smiled. “If? Does that mean you’re willing to do another Books and Brains night?”

He picked up the last folding table and tucked it under his arm. “It wasn’t terrible.”

Liza laughed.

For Grant, she was learning, it wasn’t terrible was actually similar to a standing ovation.

“Thanks for showing up tonight. And I really mean that.”

He nodded. “That kid with the tangrams. Did you see his face when he finished?”

“I saw it.”

“His mom came up to me afterward and said he never finishes anything. He gets frustrated and quits. She was actually tearing up a little.” Grant said it like he was reporting the weather, but Liza could hear it underneath, the crack in that neutral tone, the way his voice got quieter instead of louder when something mattered.

“Well, you were really good with him,” she said. “The way you explained things and listened. Hey, that wasn’t just puzzle advice. That was life advice.”

He shifted the table under his arm. “I just told him what someone once told me.”

She wanted to ask who, but she didn’t.

He paused at the door to his shop.

“That’s why puzzles,” he said quietly.

Then he went inside.

She stood there for a moment in the glow of those fairy lights, the square empty and quiet.

And somehow she felt more alive than she had all day.

There was no way Liza was sleeping tonight.

Her brain was doing that thing where it stuck like a skipping record, replaying the evening, figuring out what worked, what she could change next time, and how to make the reading challenge more engaging for the older kids.

She changed into pajamas and sat on the bed with her laptop, typing notes.

After a little while, the words started to blur, so she set it aside.

She looked over at the crossword books on the nightstand. She picked up the one on top — the same one she'd been reading from since she arrived — and flipped to a new page.

Her father’s blue ink appeared in the margin, faded but steady.

She read his handwriting the way she always did, slowly, like she was getting to hear his voice again.

W. Elliott, if you’re out there, you are the only person who might understand how my brain works.

She’d read this note before.

Tonight it hit a little differently.

Tonight she’d watched a quiet man kneel down next to a nervous boy and say, Each piece only goes one way, and it’ll tell you where if you’re patient.

Tonight she’d heard Grant say, That’s why puzzles, like he was answering a question that went deeper than any of the ones she had asked.

She traced the letters with her fingertip.