Page 39 of The Story Between Us

Okay, maybe she shouldn’t have said it quite that way. And then, wait—“What if thinking isn’t the answer?” she asked quietly. “What if you need to stop thinking and start moving?”

“Moving.”

“Literally.” She stood, crossing to a coatrack by the door. It held various sweaters and a worn canvas jacket. She threw it at him. “Let’s go.”

He’d sat up and caught it. “Where?”

“Outside. Fresh air. A change of scenery.” She found a scarf, threw that too. “Sometimes the best ideas come when you’re not trying to have them.”

He looked at her like she’d suggested they swim to Canada.

“This is ridiculous.”

“Probably. Put on your shoes.”

Miraculously, he obeyed. Maybe she’d call it desperate.

She led him outside to a trail that wound through the woods behind his property, a narrow path carpeted with fallen leaves. The air smelled like cold and decay and wet stone, but the trees were backdropped by a sky so blue it hurt to look at.

Huck and Finn ranged ahead, noses to the ground, deliriously happy to be outside with their humans.

Nate walked beside her in silence, hands shoved in his pockets. She let him have it—the quiet, the space. Sometimes people needed room to think. And maybe that had been his problem all along—thinking in the same four walls, staring at the same blank screen, drowning in the same stale air.

“Emma and I used to walk this trail,” she finally said. “That summer. She’d make up stories about the trees—which ones hid enchantments, which ones concealed fairy courts.”

No response.

“She saw magic everywhere. Even in ordinary things.” Livvie stepped over a fallen branch. “I think that’s what made her such a good storyteller.”

Still nothing.

She tried a different angle. “She would have wanted you to finish the book. She would have⁠—”

“You weren’t there.”

The words came out quiet. Final.

Livvie stopped walking. “What?”

Nate had stopped too, staring at the path ahead. The dogs circled back, sensing the shift.

“Those last days. Before she—” He didn’t finish. “You weren’t there.”

The truth of it landed like a stone in her chest. She hadn’t been. She’d already moved to New York, already started her job, already become swept up in her new life. She’d meant to visit. She’d planned to. And then Emma had gotten worse and then died, and Livvie had come back for the funeral, but it was too late.

Too late for all of it.

“No,” she said. “I wasn’t.”

He started walking again without another word. She followed.

They emerged from the trees at the edge of a small clearing, and Livvie drew a breath. A weathered wooden bench faced the lake. The view stretched for miles—trees and sky and that endless, glittering expanse.

Nate stopped. Stared.

The wind picked up, rustling leaves overhead. Somewhere, a bird called—drawn out, mournful, echoing.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then something in his posture shifted. Straightened.