I read the note three times before I could make sense of it.<\/p>\n
The handwriting was uneven, with some letters pressed so deeply into the paper that the pencil had torn the surface.<\/p>\n
Ethan\u2014<\/p>\n
If you ever find this, you owe me one chapter.<\/p>\n
Nora.<\/p>\n
I sat down on the floor.<\/p>\n
The library was quiet around me. Somewhere beyond the children's room, a printer hummed. A child whispered to his mother. Pages turned.<\/p>\n
But I heard none of it clearly.<\/p>\n
I had spent four days trying to decide whether Claire had manipulated my feelings.<\/p>\n
Now I was holding a message written by a nine-year-old girl who had been dead for seventeen years.<\/p>\n
I took a photograph of the note.<\/p>\n
Then I called Claire.<\/p>\n
She answered on the first ring.<\/p>\n
"Are you okay?"<\/p>\n
"I found something."<\/p>\n
Silence.<\/p>\n
"What?"<\/p>\n
"The book."<\/p>\n
Her breathing changed.<\/p>\n
"What book?"<\/p>\n
"The Lighthouse at Gull Point."<\/p>\n
Another pause.<\/p>\n
"Where did you find it?"<\/p>\n
"Here."<\/p>\n
"What's wrong?"<\/p>\n
"I found Nora's note."<\/p>\n
Claire didn't speak.<\/p>\n
"Claire?"<\/p>\n
"I'm coming."<\/p>\n
She arrived twenty minutes later.<\/p>\n
I was still sitting on the floor with the book in my lap.<\/p>\n
She crouched beside me.<\/p>\n
"Show me."<\/p>\n
I handed her the book.<\/p>\n
Her fingers trembled when she saw the writing.<\/p>\n
"I've never seen this."<\/p>\n
"You knew the book was here."<\/p>\n
"I knew Nora loved it. I didn't know this copy survived."<\/p>\n
"Did you know she wrote notes in books?"<\/p>\n
"Sometimes."<\/p>\n
I pointed to the message.<\/p>\n
"Did she ever mention me?"<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
"What did she say?"<\/p>\n
Claire swallowed.<\/p>\n
"That you were supposed to finish the book with her."<\/p>\n
I looked at the final page.<\/p>\n
"What happened?"<\/p>\n
"She got sick."<\/p>\n
"Then what?"<\/p>\n
"Then she left for Philadelphia."<\/p>\n
I turned the book over.<\/p>\n
"Why was this copy still here?"<\/p>\n
"I don't know."<\/p>\n
We sat in silence.<\/p>\n
Then I noticed something else.<\/p>\n
The note wasn't written recently.<\/p>\n
The pencil had faded, but the indentation beneath the words was deep.<\/p>\n
I ran my thumb across it.<\/p>\n
"She wrote this before she left."<\/p>\n
Claire nodded.<\/p>\n
"Probably."<\/p>\n
"Then why did she say 'if you ever find this'?"<\/p>\n
"Because Nora liked dramatic endings."<\/p>\n
I smiled despite myself.<\/p>\n
"She really did."<\/p>\n
Claire looked at me.<\/p>\n
"You remember her."<\/p>\n
"Pieces."<\/p>\n
"That's enough."<\/p>\n
I didn't answer.<\/p>\n
The librarian approached us.<\/p>\n
She was an older woman with silver hair and a name badge that read MARTHA.<\/p>\n
"Is everything all right?"<\/p>\n
I held up the book.<\/p>\n
"We found an old note inside."<\/p>\n
Martha leaned closer.<\/p>\n
Her eyes widened.<\/p>\n
"I know that handwriting."<\/p>\n
Claire stood.<\/p>\n
"You do?"<\/p>\n
Martha looked at the name.<\/p>\n
"Nora?"<\/p>\n
Claire nodded.<\/p>\n
Martha's face softened.<\/p>\n
"I remember her."<\/p>\n
I felt something shift inside me.<\/p>\n
"You were here?"<\/p>\n
"I ran the children's program."<\/p>\n
"Do you remember me?"<\/p>\n
She studied my face.<\/p>\n
Then she smiled.<\/p>\n
"You're Ethan."<\/p>\n
I couldn't speak.<\/p>\n
Martha pointed at me.<\/p>\n
"You were always racing her to the books."<\/p>\n
I laughed.<\/p>\n
"She cheated."<\/p>\n
"She did."<\/p>\n
Claire looked at Martha.<\/p>\n
"Why didn't anyone tell us this book was still here?"<\/p>\n
Martha shrugged.<\/p>\n
"The library was renovated. A lot of the old material was boxed and returned to storage. Some things never got catalogued properly."<\/p>\n
She took the book from me.<\/p>\n
"There may be more."<\/p>\n
She disappeared into the staff area.<\/p>\n
Claire and I waited.<\/p>\n
"What does that mean?" I asked.<\/p>\n
"I don't know."<\/p>\n
Ten minutes later, Martha returned carrying a thin cardboard box.<\/p>\n
She placed it on the table.<\/p>\n
Inside were old reading logs, photographs, handwritten lists, and several children's drawings.<\/p>\n
I recognized Nora's handwriting immediately.<\/p>\n
One page had a list of books.<\/p>\n
Another had a drawing of two children standing beside a lighthouse.<\/p>\n
Underneath it were the words:<\/p>\n
ME AND ETHAN.<\/p>\n
My throat tightened.<\/p>\n
Claire sat beside me.<\/p>\n
"She kept everything."<\/p>\n
Martha shook her head.<\/p>\n
"Not everything. Just what she thought mattered."<\/p>\n
I turned another page.<\/p>\n
There was a reading log.<\/p>\n
Nora had written both our names.<\/p>\n
Ethan \u2014 finished chapter 3.<\/p>\n
Nora \u2014 finished chapter 6.<\/p>\n
I laughed.<\/p>\n
"She really did keep score."<\/p>\n
Martha smiled.<\/p>\n
"She hated losing."<\/p>\n
I looked at Claire.<\/p>\n
"She told me she was going to beat me."<\/p>\n
"She probably did."<\/p>\n
"She always did."<\/p>\n
For several minutes, we went through the box.<\/p>\n
Then I found a folded sheet of paper.<\/p>\n
The handwriting was Claire's.<\/p>\n
I recognized it immediately.<\/p>\n
But the date was seventeen years old.<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
"What is this?"<\/p>\n
Her face changed.<\/p>\n
"Give it to me."<\/p>\n
I didn't.<\/p>\n
"What is it?"<\/p>\n
"I wrote that for Nora."<\/p>\n
"Why?"<\/p>\n
"Because she was leaving."<\/p>\n
I unfolded it.<\/p>\n
The letter was short.<\/p>\n
Claire had written that Nora needed to be brave.<\/p>\n
That she would come home.<\/p>\n
That the library would still be there.<\/p>\n
That Ethan would still be there.<\/p>\n
I stopped reading.<\/p>\n
"Did you promise her I'd be here?"<\/p>\n
Claire closed her eyes.<\/p>\n
"I thought you would be."<\/p>\n
"But I wasn't."<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"Then why write that?"<\/p>\n
"Because she asked me."<\/p>\n
I stared at her.<\/p>\n
"What did she ask?"<\/p>\n
Claire's voice broke slightly.<\/p>\n
"She asked me to bring you to see her."<\/p>\n
I felt cold.<\/p>\n
"Did you?"<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"Why?"<\/p>\n
"Because I couldn't find you."<\/p>\n
I stood.<\/p>\n
"You had my name."<\/p>\n
"I had your first name."<\/p>\n
"You found me eventually."<\/p>\n
"Seventeen years later."<\/p>\n
"Why didn't you try harder?"<\/p>\n
Claire looked down.<\/p>\n
"Because I thought you had forgotten her."<\/p>\n
The sentence angered me.<\/p>\n
"You decided that for me too."<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
I walked away from the table.<\/p>\n
"You keep doing that."<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
"No, you don't."<\/p>\n
"I do."<\/p>\n
"Then why?"<\/p>\n
Claire stood.<\/p>\n
"Because I was afraid."<\/p>\n
"Of what?"<\/p>\n
"Of finding you and discovering that Nora meant nothing to you."<\/p>\n
I turned.<\/p>\n
"She meant something to me."<\/p>\n
"I know that now."<\/p>\n
"She meant something before you found me."<\/p>\n
Claire nodded.<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
The anger drained as quickly as it had arrived.<\/p>\n
Martha quietly gathered some of the papers.<\/p>\n
"I'll leave you two alone."<\/p>\n
When she walked away, I sat again.<\/p>\n
Claire remained standing.<\/p>\n
"I need to know something."<\/p>\n
"Ask."<\/p>\n
"Did you ever choose me because I reminded you of Nora?"<\/p>\n
Claire's answer came slowly.<\/p>\n
"At first, I chose to meet you because of her."<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
"But I never loved you because of her."<\/p>\n
That distinction mattered.<\/p>\n
I wanted it to matter.<\/p>\n
She sat down.<\/p>\n
"You're nothing like Nora."<\/p>\n
I smiled faintly.<\/p>\n
"Good."<\/p>\n
"You're more stubborn."<\/p>\n
"That's impossible."<\/p>\n
"It isn't."<\/p>\n
We both laughed.<\/p>\n
The tension eased.<\/p>\n
Then I noticed a small envelope at the bottom of the box.<\/p>\n
My name was written on it.<\/p>\n
Ethan.<\/p>\n
Nothing else.<\/p>\n
I picked it up.<\/p>\n
Claire went still.<\/p>\n
"I've never seen that."<\/p>\n
I opened it.<\/p>\n
Inside was a folded sheet of paper.<\/p>\n
The handwriting was Nora's.<\/p>\n
Ethan,<\/p>\n
If you're reading this, I probably didn't get to finish the book.<\/p>\n
That sentence stopped me.<\/p>\n
I continued.<\/p>\n
You always said endings were the best part. I don't think they are. I think the middle is better because that's where everything happens.<\/p>\n
I swallowed.<\/p>\n
There were several more lines.<\/p>\n
I want you to finish the book anyway.<\/p>\n
And if I don't come back, don't let Claire make you sad forever.<\/p>\n
She's good at that.<\/p>\n
I laughed through the tears.<\/p>\n
Claire covered her mouth.<\/p>\n
The note continued.<\/p>\n
Tell her she worries too much.<\/p>\n
Tell her I wasn't scared.<\/p>\n
And tell her she owes me a new pair of glasses because she ruined mine with yellow nail polish.<\/p>\n
I looked at Claire.<\/p>\n
"She remembered."<\/p>\n
"She remembered everything."<\/p>\n
I kept reading.<\/p>\n
And if you ever see me again, don't let me win at Uno.<\/p>\n
I folded the paper.<\/p>\n
Neither of us spoke.<\/p>\n
Then I laughed.<\/p>\n
Claire laughed too.<\/p>\n
It was strange.<\/p>\n
We were standing in a library with a dead child's letter between us, and somehow she had managed to make both of us laugh.<\/p>\n
But the final line was still folded beneath my thumb.<\/p>\n
I opened it.<\/p>\n
One last sentence.<\/p>\n
And Ethan, don't let anyone tell you who you're supposed to love.<\/p>\n
I stared at it.<\/p>\n
Claire looked at me.<\/p>\n
"I think she knew."<\/p>\n
"Knew what?"<\/p>\n
"That you would need to make your own choice."<\/p>\n
I folded the letter carefully.<\/p>\n
"I do."<\/p>\n
"Then make it."<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
"Not tonight."<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
"Okay."<\/p>\n
I slipped the letter into my jacket.<\/p>\n
That evening, Claire came to my apartment.<\/p>\n
We sat across from each other at my kitchen table.<\/p>\n
No music.<\/p>\n
No television.<\/p>\n
No attempt to make the night romantic.<\/p>\n
I told her everything I was afraid of.<\/p>\n
I was afraid that our relationship had started with a secret too large to survive.<\/p>\n
I was afraid that every memory would become evidence.<\/p>\n
I was afraid that whenever she looked at me, she might see the little boy from the photograph before seeing the man sitting across from her.<\/p>\n
Claire listened.<\/p>\n
When I finished, she said something simple.<\/p>\n
"I can't change how we met."<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"I can't erase what I hid."<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"But I can stop hiding now."<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
"That matters."<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
I reached for her hand.<\/p>\n
She didn't move until I did.<\/p>\n
Her fingers closed around mine.<\/p>\n
For the first time since finding the photograph, I didn't feel like I was standing inside someone else's story.<\/p>\n
I felt like I was making my own decision.<\/p>\n
But the next morning, another envelope arrived at Claire's apartment.<\/p>\n
It wasn't from me.<\/p>\n
It wasn't from the library.<\/p>\n
And it had been addressed to her mother seventeen years earlier.<\/p>\n
Inside was a hospital discharge record with Nora's name.<\/p>\n
Claire called me before opening the second page.<\/p>\n
"I think there's something we never knew."<\/p>\n
I read the note three times before I could make sense of it. The handwriting was uneven, with some letters pressed so deeply into the paper that the pencil had … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sharestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2919,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907\/revisions\/2919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}