Page 7 of The Story Between Us

One minute. Two. Five.

The hallway hummed with the distant sounds of the office—phones ringing, keyboards clicking, the copier churning.

Nothing.

She slid the phone into her pocket and walked back to her desk.

And tried not to think about the fact that her entire career now hinged on a text from the man who broke her heart.

The lake lay still at five a.m., and Nate was the only thing moving on its surface.

His paddle dipped in and out of the water silently, just a few drips plinking into the clear water as the kayak moved across the surface.

Mist rose off the water in slow curls, softening the edges of everything. From out here, the town of Maple Lake looked like a postcard—the kind tourists bought at the General Store and mailed home with notes about how they’d found the perfect hideaway.

Truer words had never been penned.

But for a hideout, it had its charm. A sort of Mayberry feel, except along a lake, surrounded by woods.

The maples were just starting to turn. In another week or two, the whole town would be on fire—reds and golds blazing against the steel-gray water, tourists clogging Main Street for the Flannel Festival, the Maple Sweets Bakery selling out of maple pecan pie before noon.

But for now, in the blue-gray stillness of early September, the leaves were only hinting at what was coming. A flush of amber here. A streak of crimson there. The trees holding their breath.

A flock of Canada geese lifted off the lake, loud and protesting, on their way south.

He spotted his neighbor, Lila, putting in her canoe. The only other early-morning paddler from the residential area that stretched along the southern shore of the lake.

Farther around the lake sat a row of Victorian houses in butter yellow and burnt orange and dusty mauve, their white trims catching the first pale light. Wraparound porches. Gabled roofs. The kind of architecture that belonged on a Christmas card or a jigsaw puzzle.

And beyond them, on the northern shore, the town stretched out along the waterfront, just waking up with the smells of the bakery.

He could see the steeple of the Lutheran church rising above the tree line. The striped awning of Maple Sweets. The hand-painted sign for Maple Reads, the bookstore where his books sat on a shelf he hadn’t visited in three years. Farther down, the Brew was lit up, Mandie probably inside, prepping the espresso machine, moving through her opening routine in the quiet before the town truly rose.

The paddle dipped. Pulled. Dipped again.

This was the best part of his day. Out here, with the sky shifting from purple to pink at the edges, he could almost pretend he was just a guy in a kayak. Not Nate Rivers, one half of the bestselling Ian Rivers author team. Not Nate Rivers, professional disappointment. Just a body moving through water. Existing without anyone expecting anything from him.

Don’t think. Just paddle.

A loon called from somewhere in the fog, that eerie tremolo that sounded like laughing and crying at the same time. Another answered from the far shore, near the state park where the hiking trails wound through stands of white pine and paper birch. The lonely sound lifted across the water, hollow and ancient.

Found the recesses of his heart and echoed there.

He turned the kayak toward the southern shore, away from town. His property sat at the end of a gravel road, tucked into a curve of shoreline where the maples grew thick and the neighbors were few. June Bellamy lived two houses down—retired English teacher, widow, bringer of casseroles he never ate. Beyond her, nothing but woods and water for half a mile.

And of course, Lila Fox lived on the other side in her crazy pink house with the expansive front porch that Livvie used to sit on, doodling, or sometimes painting.

And where had that thought come from?

He turned toward his house, the old Craftsman materializing out of the mist as he paddled closer. Two stories of green cedar shingles, white trim glowing faintly in the dawn light, a wraparound porch that stretched toward the water like an invitation no one accepted anymore.

Too many memories of Emma lived here, but when his parents had decided to move a few years ago, he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of losing the house and had bought it himself.

But he hadn’t exactly taken care of it. The porch swing hooks hung empty—he’d taken it down when the chains finally rusted through. The garden beds hadn’t been touched in three years. The trim was starting to peel near the gutters.

Felt like a commentary on his life.

The shore came up fast. He pulled the paddle across his lap and felt the bump and scrape of rocks against the hull.