Page 20 of Piece By Piece

“Okay, what did you do?” she asked.

“Nothing bad.”

“Well, that’s exactly what somebody who did something bad would say.”

He smiled and folded his hands on the table in front of him. “I hired somebody for the inn, part-time.”

She pushed her laptop aside. “You hired someone?”

“Her name is Francine. She’s retired. Used to work in hospitality, high-end hotels. And she’s looking for something light, just a few days a week. She can handle the guest check-ins, some of the administrative stuff.”

Julie stared at him. Heat rose in her cheeks, and she couldn’t tell if it was anger or embarrassment.

“You hired somebody without talking to me first.”

“Julie, I tried to talk to you three times. You were on the phone or at the bookstore or working on your book, and I don’t blame you.”

“You should have tried a fourth time.”

Dawson leaned back in his chair and rubbed his jaw. He wasn’t a man who ever raised his voice. Julie sometimes found that more frustrating than if he just yelled. At least yelling gave you something to push back against.

“Honey, you’re running on empty. I can see it. Your girls can see it. Even Dixie called me last week and said she’s worried about you. I’m not trying to take something away from you. I’m trying to give you back the thing that you actually want to be doing.”

“And what’s that?”

“Writing. Being present. Not having to check your phone every three minutes at dinner.”

That one stung a bit because it was true. She had checked her phone at dinner last night, twice, during the salad.

She crossed her arms. “I don’t need help, Dawson.”

He stood up and kissed her forehead. “I know you don’t. But maybe you deserve it anyway.”

He left the kitchen, and she sat there a long time, staring at the place where he’d been sitting. Julie felt the particular sting of someone being right about something she wasn’t ready to hear.

The sun was going down when Grant carried his workbench stool out to the small porch in front of The Puzzle Post. It was still warm, but it was turning from day into evening, and the town square looked like something out of a painting. A tangerine sky, with the live oaks going dark against it.

He sat down with a grid sheet and pencil. Designing crosswords had always been the thing that helped him quiet his mind. He didn’t need to solve them. That was a different part of the brain. Solving them was about logic, but designing them was about architecture, about building something someone else would inhabit.

He started with the theme answers, the long ones that would anchor the grid. Usually he started with a concept, like a hidden message or a pattern, but tonight he wasn’t thinking about themes.

He was thinking about that woman next door who’d thrown a sticky note at him as if they were old friends, who had talked about her dead father’s crossword habit with a smile that held mostly love and a little grief, who had walked through his carefully arranged shop like it was her own personal playground.

He wrote the first clue.

Disruptive force, four letters.

The answer was Liza.

And he stared at it even though it felt unbearable to look at.

He erased it, of course, until there was no trace of the letters left.

He wrote a different answer.

Gust.

That was better. Safe.