Page 124 of The Story Between Us

He sat in the spot where Livvie used to sit, where she’d curled up with his manuscript pages and her red pen, where she’d fallen asleep that one night and he’d covered her with a blanket and stood there too long, watching her breathe.

The phone rang.

Margaret Rivers.

His mother. They didn’t do this—didn’t call unexpectedly, didn’t check in outside of scheduled quarterly conversations. Since Emma died, the family had operated at a careful distance. Three people who’d lost their center, orbiting each other in the dark.

He almost let it go to voicemail.

Something made him answer.

“Nathaniel.” Her voice was careful. Guarded. The same voice she’d used for three years—the one that was always braced for bad news. “How are you? How’s the weather there?”

The weather. Three years of grief, and they talked about the weather.

“Gray,” he said. “Cold. How’s Florida?”

“Warm. Your father’s golfing.” A pause. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. They didn’t do this either—didn’t admit to thinking about each other, to missing each other, to any of the messy emotions that lived underneath the surface conversations.

“The book,” she said. “How’s it going?”

He laughed, except it came out bitter. “I don’t know how to finish it.”

Silence on the line.

“I keep trying,” he continued, and he didn’t know why he was telling her this, why the words were spilling out after three years of keeping everything locked down. “But I’m stuck on the ending. The final scene. Aldric made it through the forest, saved Elara, found the woman he loves, and now he just has to claim the kingdom. Step into his role as king. I’ve written it forty-seven times, and it’s wrong every time. Okay, forty-seven is an exaggeration. Maybe ten times. Still.”

“Oh, Nate.”

“I don’t know how to do this alone.” And he wasn’t talking about Emma, was he?

The silence stretched. He could hear his mother breathing. Could picture her on the lanai in Florida, her reading glasses pushed up on her head, her cardigan wrapped around her shoulders despite the warmth.

“Honey.” Her voice was softer now. Something he hadn’t heard in years. “Don’t you remember what Emma always said? About where the stories came from?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She used to tell me—” His mother paused. Took a breath. “She said the creativity wasn’t hers. Not really. She said she just saw things. Beyond the natural. The what-ifs, the possibilities, the beauty of what could be. She called it glimpsing heaven.”

His throat tightened. He remembered Emma talking about the stories like they were gifts, not achievements. Like she was receiving them instead of creating them.

“She spent time with God, Nathaniel. Every morning, before she wrote. She said that’s where the stories came from—not from her imagination but from listening. From being still enough to hear what He wanted to show her.” His mother’s voice wavered. “She said the books were her way of sharing that. Of showing people what she saw when she looked beyond the world in front of her.”

He didn’t know what to do with this. The spiritual truth of it—the faith his sister had carried, the faith he’d lost somewhere along the way. It felt too big, too close to the wound.

“I found something,” his mother continued. “When I was packing up her room at the hospital. A letter. She asked me to give it to you.”

His heart stopped.

“I should have told you sooner. But you were so broken after the funeral, and I kept waiting for the right time, and then—” Her voice caught. “I put it in her Bible. The one in her room. I’m sorry, Nathaniel. I should have given it to you years ago.”

“Her Bible.” He was already standing. Already moving toward the stairs.

“Psalm 34:18. That’s where I put it. She had it marked.”

“I have to go.”