Page 56 of Piece By Piece

And what was underneath was not the careful, guarded man she’d been getting to know for weeks.

It was somebody who seemed raw and exposed and tired of hiding.

The relief was almost physical.

“Yes,” he said.

One word.

No explanation.

No defense.

Just the truth laid on the counter between them.

Liza let out a breath.

Her eyes moved from his face to the framed crossword on the wall near the register, the one she’d noticed on her first visit, the one about which she’d said, whoever made this is really good, all while the man who made it stood three feet away and said nothing.

“The crossword on the wall,” she said.

“Mine.”

“The app, Gridlock?”

“Mine.”

“Forty million downloads?”

He nodded.

She pressed her hands on the counter and closed her eyes.

When she opened them, they were brighter.

“I told you my father’s favorite crossword creator was W. Elliott. I said that to your face, and you just sat there like you were oblivious to it.”

“I know.”

“And your coffee cup stopped in midair. I remember that. I thought you were just being polite. And maybe a little dramatic.”

“Yeah. I was trying not to fall apart.”

That phrase stopped her.

The honesty of it.

The unguarded way that Grant almost never was.

She had come in here carrying the weight of this discovery.

But he’d met her with something heavier.

The weight of a man having been discovered.

She opened her father’s book to the page that she had marked with her thumb, the margin note.

She turned it toward Grant so he could read it.