Page 3 of Piece By Piece

It wasn’t a lie, exactly. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

The whole truth was that three months ago, she’d had a panic attack at her desk so bad that her assistant thought she was having a heart attack and called 911.

Then the paramedics came.

Her coworkers watched.

Her boss sent her home with a look that was equal parts concern and inconvenience. Who wants a person causing drama at work because she can’t contain her anxiety?

She had quit her job the very next morning without any sort of plan, without any savings, without telling her mother the real reason she was leaving. As far as her mom knew, Liza had left to “pursue other opportunities,” which was just corporate-speak for “I fell apart, and nobody - including me - noticed until it was an absolute emergency.”

Dixie looked at her for a moment.

That was the thing about Dixie. For all her outgoing nature and bluster, she had a way of going quiet at exactly the right moments. Like she could hear the things people just weren’t ready to say out loud.

She didn’t push. She just took another sip of her tea and said, “Well, we sure are glad to have you. I tell you, this old bookstore could use some young energy.”

“I’m thirty-two. I don’t know how young that really is anymore,” Liza said, chuckling.

“Oh, sugar, when you’re my age, thirty-two is basically a fetus.”

Liza looked at the storefront next to the bookstore. The last time she’d been here, that store had been a gift shop. But now the windows had brown paper over them, and a little sign on the door read “The Puzzle Post: Opening Soon.”

“Hey, what’s going on over there next door?”

Dixie barely even looked over. “Oh, some guy rented that space. Apparently, he sells brain games, puzzles, and whatnot. He’s as quiet as a church mouse. I’ve brought him cookies three different times. And you know what? He’s eaten exactly zero of them from what I can tell.”

“Well, maybe he just doesn’t like cookies.”

Dixie looked at her like she had just suggested that the earth was flat. “Honey, everybody likes cookies.”

The apartment above the bookstore was small but clean. Nobody had inhabited it for years, according to Dixie. It was a place they had used for storage until very recently.

There was one bedroom, a kitchenette, and a bathroom with a claw-foot tub that had seen way better days. There were French doors that opened onto a narrow balcony overlooking the town square.

Dixie had put out fresh towels and a Mason jar with wildflowers on the nightstand.

Liza unpacked slowly, which was pretty unusual for her. She had a type-A personality and usually tore through a suitcase like a tornado, dealing with the mess later on.

But tonight, she took her time, hanging things up, folding them, and putting them into the little dresser drawers that creaked when she opened them.

Maybe it was the quiet. Charleston had never felt this quiet to her. There was always something going on, but not in Seagrove. People seemed to appreciate the quiet here.

The last thing she unpacked was the box.

She sat on the edge of the bed and opened it. There were exactly eleven crossword puzzle books inside, stacked very neatly. Some of them had coffee rings on the covers, but most of them just had bent spines from being held open too long.

All of them were filled with her father’s handwriting. Blue ink, always blue, with the occasional margin note where he’d written something to nobody in particular.

This was a tricky one today.

Ha ha, got you.

Wow, this creator is a genius. I’d love to meet him someday.

That one was in the book that was on top, written right next to the crossword by someone named W. Elliott.

Her father had circled the byline twice.