Page 47 of Piece By Piece

The second one led from the bakery to the marina, which was a bit longer, and it had a number puzzle.

The third involved a rebus.

The fourth was a miniature crossword, just five across, five down, that he had spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to perfect.

Liza came in around three o’clock with iced coffees.

She put his on the counter.

She had learned he liked it with one sugar and no cream, which he hadn’t told her, but she had somehow figured out.

She walked over to the workbench where the clue cards were spread out and picked one up, then another, then the third.

She held them side by side.

Her mouth opened slightly, but she didn’t say anything for a long time.

“They’re not finished,” Grant said.

“These aren’t just puzzles.” She looked at him. “These are like little gifts. I mean, each one of these is the kind of thing that kids will keep and cherish for a lifetime. I mean, this is the kind of thing a person puts in a box under their bed and finds twenty years later and then remembers the whole day. Why are there just clue cards?” She put them down carefully. “Who taught you to draw like this?”

“Nobody, I guess. I like precision, and drawing is just precision with a softer pencil.”

She shook her head. “You know, you always say everything that you do is just ordinary, and it’s not ordinary, Grant. It’s extraordinary. And the fact that you can’t see that is one of the most frustrating but endearing parts of you.”

He didn’t know what to do with the word endearing, so he just didn’t move.

“You wanna learn how to build a crossword?” he asked.

They sat together at the workbench, a blank grid between them, a pencil in Liza’s hand.

Grant’s hand was next to hers on the paper, close enough that their fingers almost touched when he reached across to point at a square.

“Okay, so the grid has to be symmetrical,” he started. “If you black out a square on the top left, you’re going to have to black out the corresponding square on the bottom right, like a mirror.”

“Why?”

“Well, because symmetry creates fairness. Every person solving a puzzle enters the puzzle from a different direction, so the grid should work no matter where you start.”

She blacked out a square in the upper left corner, and then he pointed to the lower right corner, so she blacked out that one to match.

They did this a few more times until the grid had a skeleton, an architecture of little black and white squares that looked like a tiny building.

“All right, now the words. You want your theme answers to be the longest ones. They’re like the spine of the puzzle, and everything else connects to them.”

“How do you pick a theme?”

“Well, it depends. Sometimes you can do wordplay or a hidden message or even just a feeling you’re trying to capture.”

“A feeling?”

He paused for a moment, the pencil hovering.

“The best puzzles aren’t the intellectual exercises. They’re the emotional ones. So you create a path for someone to walk through, and the destination feels like arriving somewhere, not just finishing something.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“That’s kind of beautiful.”