Page 32 of The Story Between Us

Nate didn’t answer. But he didn’t ask her to leave either.

So far, so good.

She’d seen his pitiful words. There was no coming back from that.

The silence stretched between them, filled only by Huck’s tail thumping against the floor and Finn’s hopeful whine at the scent of today’s soup.

Which was⁠—

“What kind of soup⁠—”

“Chicken wild rice.”

He should tell her to leave. Should grab the soup, thank her for the delivery, and shut the door on whatever this—whatever she—threatened to become.

Instead, he watched her pick up the soup container and head toward his kitchen like she owned the place.

“What are you doing?”

“Finding you a bowl.” She said it like it should be obvious. Like she broke into grieving authors’ homes and raided their kitchens every Tuesday.

“I can see that. Why?”

Because you need to write. And I think that terrifies you.

She had no idea. Terrified. She’d called it exactly right, and he wanted to hate her a little for that. As if.

She didn’t answer. She’d already pulled down one of the blue ceramic bowls—the ones his grandmother had bought in the seventies to match the aggressive optimism of the orange cabinetry—and ladled soup into it. Rich and warm and faintly sweet.

The microwave door opened and closed. Buttons beeped. The machine hummed to life, casting a yellow glow across the kitchen as the turntable began its slow rotation.

Livvie opened another drawer. Nate’s drawer. Found a placemat he’d forgotten he owned—woven, rust-colored, probably also from the seventies. A cloth napkin. Silverware that she actually matched, which amounted to more effort than he’d put into a meal since he couldn’t remember when.

She arranged them on the kitchen table like she was staging a photo shoot for a homemaking magazine. The table sat in a nook by the window, looking out at the lake and the dock and the two Adirondack chairs that had been sitting empty for three years.

The microwave beeped. The soup came out steaming, and she set it on the placemat with the kind of care usually reserved for royalty. Bowl. Napkin. Spoon. Glass of milk. A place setting for one, in a kitchen that had seen nothing but cereal and despair for longer than he wanted to admit.

“Sit,” she said. “Eat. You need nourishment for creativity.”

He sat.

He had no idea why he sat. Maybe because she’d told him to. Maybe because no one had set a place for him in three years, and the simple domesticity of it—bowl, napkin, glass of milk—hit somewhere behind his sternum he didn’t have defenses for.

Maybe because she’d seen the words on his laptop and called them something instead of nothing, and that terrified him more than the blank page ever had.

He didn’t pick up the spoon.

Livvie didn’t seem to notice. She was a small tornado of purposeful energy, gathering the dishes from the counter and stacking them in the sink with efficient clinks and clatters. She found a sponge—he didn’t know he had a sponge—and attacked the counter like it had personally offended her.

And then she talked. “You need to finish this book.” A coffee stain met its end under her assault. “Do you understand how many people love these books? I’ve read reviews—actual reviews, not the garbage ones from people who think criticism means cruelty—where readers talk about how Thornwood got them through chemo. Through divorce. Through—” She scrubbed harder. “Through losing someone they loved.”

She moved to the dog food scattered around Huck’s bowl. At some point, Huck had arrived to supervise, his tail wagging hopefully. Livvie scooped up the kibble with her bare hands and deposited it back in the bowl, then scratched behind his ears like they’d known each other for years.

“Your sister did amazing work.”

Huck’s tail reached maximum velocity. Livvie kept scratching, kept talking. “The way she built that world—the magic system with the three sources, the political tension between the kingdoms, the languages—I mean, who creates an entire linguistic family tree for a fantasy novel?”

Nate’s hand tightened around the spoon he still hadn’t used. “I did.”