Page 8 of The Story Between Us

And there they were.

His two silly labradoodles.

Huck sat at the end of the dock, tail thumping against the weathered wood. Finn bounded down to the waterline, barking, spinning in circles, nearly knocking Nate into the water trying to lick his face.

“Yeah, yeah.” He climbed out, boots splashing in the shallows. “I’m back. Don’t throw a parade.”

Finn indeed threw a parade, jumping up, dancing around him, brown eyes bright. Huck just watched from the dock with those soft brown eyes, tail still thumping.

Emma had named them. We need literary dogs.

He hauled the kayak up onto the sand and paused.

The firepit sat cold, ringed by blue camping chairs. Four chairs, arranged for gatherings that didn’t happen anymore. Emma’s was on the right, angled toward the water. His was on the left. The one directly across⁠—

Don’t.

“Come on,” he told the dogs. “Breakfast.”

He should probably do the dishes, but they were stacked in the sink. He glanced at the calendar. Two days until the cleaning lady.

He threw some dish soap on them and ran water while the dogs inhaled their food. The soundtrack of his mornings: kibble crunching, tags jingling, the old radiator ticking as the house warmed, chasing out the slightest nip of fall in the September air.

Coffee next. Grinding the beans—the Brew’s dark roast, bought in bulk so he didn’t have to go to town and make small talk with Mandie about how he was doing. Boiling the water. The bloom of grounds in the French press, that first rush of scent.

He took his mug and stood in the hallway. Looking at the office door.

Not yet.

He detoured to the living room instead. Checked his phone. The screen was a graveyard of notifications—emails from his publisher, a few from his parents in Florida.

The photo on the mantel caught his eye.

Emma and Livvie, Fourth of July, seven years ago. Arms around each other, laughing at something off camera. Emma wearing a red tank top and that ridiculous stars-and-stripes headband she’d bought at the General Store. Livvie in one of Emma’s old sweaters, the cream-colored one with the oversized collar.

And in the background, slightly out of focus: him. Caught mid-turn, looking at Livvie.

Emma had it framed. Evidence, she’d called it.

He should have taken it down.

The coffee finished steeping, he poured a mug, then headed to the office, not sure why. Habit? Hope? The office door opened with a creak. The room was exactly as he’d left it yesterday—and the day before, and the week before. Desk buried under books and papers. Cold coffee mug from some indeterminate point in the past. Laptop closed.

And the walls.

Maps everywhere. The entire world of the Thornwood Chronicles rendered in ink and colored pencil—trade routes in red, military movements in blue, the slow creep of the Blight in sickly green. He’d drawn most of these. Late nights, early mornings, the scratch of pen on paper while the lake lapped against the dock outside.

You’re the cartographer. I’m just the one making up stories about the places you build. He could almost hear Emma, even now, from her spot on the floor, surrounded by her notebooks, sketching out plot threads while he mapped the terrain.

See, that’s why he should sell the house. Nowhere was free of her.

Still, he sat down and opened his laptop. The document appeared: Book 5 – DRAFT.

The cursor blinked.

One line of text at the top of the page: Chapter Three.

That was it. Three years and two chapters.