Page 41 of The Story Between Us

A board creaked under her foot and she froze. But no voice rose to stop her, so…she opened the door.

The room was small, dusty light filtering from a window facing the lake. A twin bed with a faded, handmade quilt. A bookshelf crammed with paperbacks. A desk cluttered with art supplies—pencils, markers, watercolors in a ceramic dish.

Emma’s room. Untouched. Three years of dust and silence, preserved like an exhibit in a museum of grief.

Livvie’s throat tightened. She should leave. This belonged to someone else, sacred and private⁠—

But there on the desk, a notebook lay open. And even from the doorway, she could see color. Drawings.

She crossed the room before she could stop herself.

Dozens of them. Watercolor sketches of a room that didn’t exist—hand-painted murals of enchanted forests, a reading nook built into a tree trunk, bookshelves carved like castle walls, tiny chairs shaped like woodland creatures.

She turned the page. Floor plans. Color swatches. Notes in Emma’s handwriting:

Window seats here—kids can see the lake while they read

Needs a secret door! Every magical place needs a secret door!

Reading corner for storytelling—big enough for fifteen kids

And at the bottom, in careful letters:

Children’s Room at the Library—The Storybook Corner

Her breath caught. Emma’s dream. Designed but never built. Waiting.

She closed the notebook carefully and backed out of the room, pulling the door to the same slightly ajar position.

Downstairs, Nate’s office door creaked open.

She moved fast, tiptoeing down the stairs, slipping into the living room, grabbing the first book her hand touched from the shelf by the fireplace. She dropped onto the couch, opened to a random page, and tried to look like she’d been there for hours.

The footsteps stopped in the doorway.

“You’re reading my book.”

She looked up, forcing her expression into something resembling casual. Nate stood there, rumpled and dazed, dark circles under his eyes but something else there too—something that looked almost like hope.

“I’m rereading your book,” she corrected, glancing at the cover. The Court of Thornwood. Book one. Good—she actually knew this one. “Quality control. Making sure it holds up.”

“And?”

“The prose is insufferably good. Very annoying.” She closed the book, keeping her finger in the page like she’d actually been reading it. “How’s it going in there?”

He leaned against the doorframe. Ran a hand through his hair. “Four pages.”

“Four pages?”

“Rough. Needs work. But—” He stopped. Swallowed. “Something.”

“Nate.” She set the book aside, heart pounding for reasons that had nothing to do with almost getting caught. “That’s amazing. That’s⁠—”

“It’s not amazing. It’s four pages. It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. It’s four more pages than yesterday. Four more than the day before.” She stood, crossing toward him. “That’s how it works. Word by word. Page by page.”

He looked at her, really looked, maybe for the first time since she’d arrived. Like he saw her instead of seeing through her.