Page 64 of Piece By Piece

Then they laughed about a seagull stealing SuAnn’s pie.

Her mother asked about the bookstore, about Dixie.

And then, with the careful casualness that only mothers can manage…

“So, are you meeting anyone special down there?”

Liza smiled.

“Maybe.”

“Well, ‘maybe’ means yes. Tell me everything.”

“Not yet, Mom. I promise when there’s something to tell you, this time I will actually tell you.”

Her mother sighed.

“Fine, but I want details.”

When she hung up, the weight that had been sitting on her chest for the last few weeks was gone.

Not all of it, because sometimes weights don’t lift completely.

They just get a bit lighter.

But she could breathe in a way she hadn’t been able to. The air tasted sweet again, like salt and jasmine. Her mother had said she sounded like herself again.

And for the first time, Liza thought that might actually be true.

Julie stood in the doorway of the kitchen and watched as Francine made festival preparations with the efficiency of a woman who had once managed a five-star hotel.

Francine probably found the Inn at Seagrove to be quaint by comparison.

The guest rooms were ready, the breakfast menu for tomorrow was planned, even the extra chairs had already been delivered.

Francine had handled all of it while Julie was at the bookstore helping Liza set up for the scavenger hunt.

Julie was waiting for the panic to come, that familiar tightness in her chest that arrived when she wasn’t the one in control, but it never did.

Dawson appeared beside her.

He didn’t say a word.

He just put his arm around her shoulders and stood there as the two of them watched Francine tape a festival schedule to the front desk.

“See,” he said.

Julie leaned her head on his shoulder.

“Yeah, I see.”

She went to her laptop that night and wrote for two solid hours.

The words came the way they hadn’t in months.

She wasn’t trying to control the story anymore.

She was just following it.