Page 7 of Piece By Piece

Owen had been the loud one. He was the one who walked into a room and made it feel warm just by being there. He would talk to strangers in checkout lines and remember the names of every waiter at every restaurant. He called Grant on the phone just to tell him a joke that he’d heard.

He was two years older and often felt more like a second father than a brother. He was the fun one, the one who said yes when everyone else said no.

He’d also been the one who had pushed Grant to share his puzzles with the world.

Grant had only been twenty-two when he created his first crossword, sitting at a card table in his studio apartment with graph paper and a mechanical pencil. He had shown it to Owen the next weekend, like it was a secret.

Owen had looked at it for maybe forty-five seconds and said, “You’re sending this somewhere.”

“It’s just a puzzle, man.”

“It’s not just a puzzle. This is the best puzzle I’ve ever seen, and you know I’ve done lots of puzzles while pretending to work. You’re sending it somewhere, and I’m going to stand over your shoulder while you do it.”

And he had.

Owen had been the one who found the publisher. Owen had been the one who suggested a pseudonym when Grant got too nervous about the attention. Owen had been the one who, many years later, convinced him to build Gridlock.

“You make the magic,” Owen always said. “I’ll make the noise.”

Three years ago, Owen’s heart stopped. Sudden cardiac arrest before he even made it to forty years old. No warning, no symptoms. He had just been hanging out at a cookout with friends, laughing at something someone said.

Then he was on the ground.

And then he was gone.

Grant had gotten the call while driving home from a meeting with a developer who wanted to license Gridlock for schools. He had to pull over on the side of the road and sit there for two hours.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t even call anybody. He just sat there with his engine running, trying to figure out how the world could keep moving when the one person who made it spin had stopped living.

Everything after that was just a blur. The funeral, the estate, the selling of the app because Grant just couldn’t look at it anymore without hearing Owen’s voice saying, “We did it, little brother.”

The slow dismantling of every part of his life that had required him to be visible and present.

He’d come to Seagrove to be invisible, to build something small and quiet that was entirely his own and something that didn’t need Owen’s noise to survive.

He placed the photo on the shelf in the back room next to the crossword book and straightened the frame with his thumb.

“Owen, you would hate this town,” he said quietly. “It’s way too slow for you.”

That wasn’t true, and he knew it.

Owen would have loved Seagrove. He would have been on a first-name basis with every single person on the island within a week.

The bell above the door rang at precisely 2:15 in the afternoon.

Grant looked up from the table he was arranging and saw the woman from the balcony. He recognized her even though they had never really met. He’d seen her last night, and he knew she’d waved in his direction. Of course, he hadn’t waved back because waving at strangers just wasn’t something he did.

She was carrying a plate of cookies covered with plastic wrap and smiling, having already decided their conversation would go well.

“Hi, I’m Liza. I’m staying next door, above the bookstore. I’m helping Dixie with the children’s section.” She held out the plate. “Dixie made these snickerdoodles. They are to die for. And she told me to tell you that if you don’t eat them this time, she’s going to take it personally.”

He looked at the plate, then at her.

“Grant.”

“Just Grant?”

“Just Grant.”