Page 119 of The Story Between Us

The notebook sat between them like evidence at a crime scene.

“Tell me,” Lila said, not turning from the stove.

So Livvie did.

Emma’s room. Her sketches and Livvie’s brilliant idea to finish the Storybook Corner. “I thought it would…help him heal, I think.”

Lila had made her mm-hmm sound, just listened.

“And when he started searching for it, I just couldn’t…I couldn’t tell him. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“He said I had no right.” Livvie’s voice broke. “He said I help too much. He said⁠—”

She couldn’t repeat the rest. It hurt too much.

Lila touched her hand to Livvie’s. “And what do you think?”

“I think—” Livvie swallowed. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe I do this. Take over. Make things about my need to be needed instead of what the other person actually wants.”

She twisted the ring on her finger—the silver fox, worn smooth from years of this exact nervous habit. Her mother’s ring. The only thing Livvie had asked for after the funeral, the only piece of her mother she wore every day.

“Maybe I should have just left the notebook where it was. Let him figure things out on his own. Instead I—” She laughed, bitter and wet. “I couldn’t help myself. I saw a problem I could solve and I just…had to solve it. Even when no one asked me to.”

Lila was quiet for a long moment. Steam rose from her mug. Outside, a bird sang something inappropriately cheerful.

“Can I tell you what I see?” she finally asked.

Livvie nodded, bracing herself.

“I see a woman with a generous, giving, beautiful heart.” Lila’s voice was steady. Certain. “I see someone who found something she genuinely believed would help the man she cares about. Yes, maybe you should have asked first. Maybe you overstepped. But Livvie—” She reached across the table and took Livvie’s hand. “This isn’t about you.”

“What?”

“His reaction. The explosion. The cruelty of what he said.” Lila squeezed her fingers. “That’s not about you. That’s about him. About grief. About a wound so deep he doesn’t know how to hold it without lashing out.”

Livvie shook her head. “But I took Emma’s notebook. I invaded his⁠—”

“You found his sister’s ideas, and I think you needed to heal too.”

Oh.

“Was it the right call? Maybe not. But was it malicious? Was it selfish?” Lila’s eyes held hers. “You tell me.”

“No,” she whispered. “I just wanted to help him.”

“I know you did. And somewhere under all that pain, he knows it too.” Lila released her hand and sat back. “But grief doesn’t think clearly. Grief lashes out. Grief says terrible things it doesn’t mean because the alternative is feeling the unbearable weight of loss.”

She looked out the window, at Nate’s silent home. “Maybe I need to let go,” she said quietly. “Of the need to be needed. Of thinking I can fix everyone.”

“Maybe.” Lila tilted her head. “Or maybe you need to stop tying your identity to fixing things in the first place.”

Livvie looked up. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve spent your whole life trying to be useful, sweetheart. Trying to earn your place. Trying to prove that you deserve to be loved by being indispensable.” Lila’s voice was gentle but unflinching. “But what if you just…let someone love you for who you are? Without fixing anything. Without earning it.”

The words hit somewhere deep.