Page 136 of Matchmaking On The Menu

“You... what?”

“I thought maybe a handful would.”

I smile. “Turns out nearly everyone had one.”

She looks back down at the booklet. There are more pages, more headlines. Small moments she’d forgotten almost as soon as she’d said them.

A father helping his daughter learn to ride a bike.

Mrs. Newberry quietly paying someone’s overdue library fines.

A teenager shoveling old Mrs. Carter’s driveway before school.

Mr. Davenport fixing a little girl’s kite with fishing line because it was all he had.

None of them were world-changing, but every single one had mattered to someone.

A tear slips down her cheek. “I thought nobody remembered these.”

“They did.” I gently close the booklet with my hand resting over hers. “They didn’t remember them because they were funny.”

She looks at me.

“They remembered them because you saw them.”

I glance around the room. While she’d been preoccupied with the book, the town had slowly crept in. I don’t know how they did it, but they did. Every face is turned toward her. Smiling. Waiting.

“You’ve spent years making people feel seen, Dannica.” My voice softens. “You just never realized they were seeing you too.”

She looks around the hall.

At Mr. Davenport.

Mary.

Shelly.

Quadri.

Mrs. Newberry.

Grandma Mildred.

All the people she’d spent years serving. People she’d seen.

“I thought...” Her voice breaks. “I thought I was just making silly headlines.”

“They were never silly.” I squeeze her hand. “They were stories.”

Another tear rolls down her cheek as she clutches the booklet to her chest.

For years, Dannica believed becoming a writer meant leaving this town behind. Standing in this room, surrounded by the people she’d unknowingly written about, she finally understood.

She hadn’t been waiting to become a writer.

She’d been one all along.

EPILOGUE