Page 34 of The Story Between Us

The word escaped before he could stop it. A traitor syllable, defecting to the enemy.

Livvie’s whole face lit up like he’d handed her a winning lottery ticket. The transformation struck him as almost alarming. She went from earnest and pleading to incandescent in the space of a heartbeat.

“Really?”

“You can walk the dogs.” He held up a hand before she could get too excited. The universe’s weakest dam against a flood of enthusiasm. “Clean…something. Whatever this is.” He gestured at the suddenly organized kitchen, the dishes in the sink. “Just don’t get in my way.”

“I won’t.” She practically vibrated. Huck picked up on the energy and started wagging his tail again, feeding off her excitement. “This is going to work. I can feel it. Operation Book Written is officially a go.”

Nate closed his eyes. “Please don’t call it that.”

“Mission: Manuscript.”

“No.”

“Operation Drag Him to the End.”

He refused to smile. “Really?”

“How about Project Grumpy Genius?”

He looked away.

“You like that one. I can tell.” She leaned back. “We have two weeks to finish this thing. There’s only one thing to do.”

“Write the book?”

“I’m making a spreadsheet. Color-coded. With milestones.”

“Of course you are.”

She stood, gathering her cardigan from where she’d dropped it over a chair.

“Now will you please leave?” he asked.

“Fine.” She headed for the door, then paused at the threshold, looking back over her shoulder. The kitchen light caught the auburn in her hair, turned it warm as autumn leaves. “See you in the morning, writing buddy.”

“No, Livvie⁠—”

“Too late!” The words trailed behind her as she disappeared into the hallway. The front door opened, letting in a gust of cool evening air, then closed with a decisive click.

The house went quiet.

Nate sat there for a moment, listening to the silence settle back into the corners where it lived. The soup had gone lukewarm now. It sat there getting cold while he cataloged everything that had just happened like a man reviewing footage of his own car crash.

He stood and walked toward the family room. The laptop sat where he’d left it on the coffee table, closed like a secret. But in his mind, he could still see the words.

The door stood never locked, only heavy.

She’s back. Emma sat in the writing chair.

Not really. He knew she didn’t really exist there. The rational part of his brain—the part that had earned a graduate degree and read too much philosophy and understood how grief manifested in the human psyche—knew that memory was causing this, or imagination, or exhaustion playing tricks.

But there she sat. Legs tucked up under her the way she always sat, bare feet peeking out from under the hem of her oversized cardigan. Her hair hung dark and wild, the way it got when she’d been running her hands through it while she thought. And she smiled—that knowing, slightly smug smile that meant she’d figured something out before he had.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said out loud to an empty room, because apparently, he’d turned into a man who had conversations with his dead sister.

The vision—the memory—the whatever—tilted her head. Her smile widened.