Page 49 of Piece By Piece

“Yeah. That’s exactly what it is.”

She smiled at him, a quiet smile like it was meant just for him, and it undid something in his chest that he’d been spending the last three years trying to keep shut.

Later that evening, Grant was alone in his shop and checked his email for the first time in three days.

Of course, there were the usual things. Newsletters from companies, a note from his accountant, a reminder about a subscription that he had forgotten to cancel.

But buried between a spam message and a shipping notification, there was an email from an address he recognized.

Jonathan Webb, CEO of Meridian Games, the man who had been trying to reach Grant, or actually trying to reach W. Elliott, for six months.

Grant looked at the subject line.

Formal acquisition proposal, W. Elliott brand and IP.

He opened it against his better judgment.

The email was what he expected, professional and direct.

Meridian Games wanted to acquire the W. Elliott brand, the back catalog, the name, the rights to any future puzzles under the pseudonym.

They wanted to build a digital platform around it. Puzzle apps, subscription crosswords, educational products.

The offer was generous, as expected. Not a retire-to-an-island kind of generous — he’d already done that on his own — but significant enough that his accountant would call it life-changing.

There was, of course, a catch.

It would require Grant to relocate to Seattle for at least two years to oversee the creative transition.

They wanted the brain behind the brand, not just the brand itself.

He would have two years in Seattle. Office hours, meetings, the exact kind of tech-world machinery that he had dismantled his whole life to escape.

He closed the email, then opened it again.

Six months ago, he would have just deleted it without even reading past the subject line.

Six months ago, he had been a man who had no ties or obligations and no reason to stay anywhere longer than a lease required.

But six months ago, he hadn’t sat on the floor of a bookstore during a storm and told a woman about his dead brother.

He hadn’t watched a boy solve a puzzle and felt like something cracked open in his chest.

He hadn’t stood on a porch step and said, she’s looking in the wrong places, and meant she should be looking here.

He left the email open on his screen and then went to the back room.

Owen’s photo was on the shelf where it always was.

That tiny fish and his enormous grin.

What would you tell me to do? Grant thought.

He already knew the answer.

Owen would have said, “Close that laptop and go tell her how you feel, you big idiot.”

But Grant wasn’t ready to do that.