Page 62 of Piece By Piece

“Your former agent. He was a little concerned that you’re not taking this seriously.”

Grant leaned against the wall.

“I’ve read the proposal.”

“And?”

“And I’m thinking about it.”

“Listen, Grant, this is a once-in-a-career opportunity. We’re not just buying a brand. We’re going to build a platform around your whole creative vision. Puzzle labs, educational tools, subscriptions, and the W. Elliott name has recognition that money can’t buy. But we need you to come to Seattle. We need you here. We need the mind behind the name or it just won’t work.”

Grant looked through the doorway into his shop, at the owl cookie jar on the counter and the slightly crooked way it always was.

At the try-it table where that shy boy had solved his first tangram.

At the fairy lights that were visible through the front window, connecting his shop to the bookstore.

“I need more time,” he said.

“End of the month, man. That’s the best I can do. After that, the board’s going to move on.”

Grant hung up and stood in the back room for a long time, holding his phone and looking at Owen’s photo on the shelf beside him.

He felt the two halves of his life pressing up against each other.

The old one pulling him toward safety and anonymity, and the new one asking him to stay.

Seattle, two years.

He’d have an office with his name on the door, his real name attached to his pseudonym, his anonymity stripped away once and for all.

He would be W. Elliott in public.

He would do interviews and panels, have the kind of visibility his brother always wanted and that Grant had always run from.

Six months ago, he would have said no without even thinking about it.

The answer would have been automatic, the same way he would pull his hand back from a hot stove.

But six months ago, he hadn’t had a single reason to stay anywhere.

Liza’s voice drifted through the wall.

He could hear her laughing about something over at the bookstore.

He pressed his hand flat against the wall and listened, the way she had listened to his music through this same wall weeks ago and finally admitted it to him.

He thought, I wish I had known you all my life, so I wouldn’t have wasted so much time without you.

The thought arrived fully formed and clear as a crossword answer.

It shook him to his core, because it wasn’t just a feeling; it was a fact.

Every year before Seagrove, every month in all the other towns — he'd spent them building walls, selling apps, and hiding behind a pseudonym.

And it felt like he had spent all of it in the wrong room.

He pulled his hand away from the wall and went back to packing the prizes.