I took out my board. You can go, Cheryl.
She raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? I don’t want you here if he’s nowhere to be found…”
I’ll be fine. I promise. I’ll call you if I ne
ed anything.
She was hesitating to go, but after some convincing, she drove off. I waited in the living room, sitting on the couch for Brooks to return, but he didn’t. After some time, I grabbed an umbrella and headed outside to walk into town as the raindrops kept falling. When I reached the local library, I hurried inside, taking my writing board with me.
The library was huge for such a small town, and made me feel as if I were back in my bedroom, surrounded by my favorite stories. As I walked in, a woman sitting at the front desk smiled my way. She had a sweetness to her, with her chocolate eyes and short gray hair. Her nametag read Mrs. Henderson. “Hi, can I help you somehow?”
I began writing. I’m looking for someone, and not sure if he’s been seen lately.
She snickered. “Honey, I know it’s a library, but you don’t have to be that quiet.”
I grimaced, and tapped my throat, and shook my head back and forth.
She frowned. “Oh my, you can’t speak? I’m so sorry. Okay, well, who are you looking for?”
Brooks Griffin.
She narrowed her eyes. “Now don’t come up into this town playing the sweet card, and then turn out to be a stalker of that poor boy. He’s been through enough already. The last thing he needs is someone coming up to bother him for an autograph or something.”
I’m a friend.
“Prove it.”
Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my cell phone, and showed her pictures of Brooks and me cuddling together.
She smiled. “Seems like you both are close friends. Okay, well, it’s raining so he can only be in one place. Come on, follow me. I’ll show you. But if it turns out that those pictures are Photoshopped, so help me I’ll call Lucas. He’s not only the town cop, but he’s my husband, too.”
She grabbed her umbrella, then walked me out of the library and across the road to the coast of Lake Messa.
“You see him?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“There.” She pointed out to the water. “That tiny speck is him. Him and his tiny canoe,” Mrs. Henderson said, staring in the same exact direction in which I stared. Brooks was seated in the middle of the lake in his solo canoe. The rain was hammering against him, but he seemed unfazed by it all. “He only goes out there when it rains, never on the sunny days.”
I cocked my head to Mrs. Henderson, filled with wonderment, and she shrugged before speaking again. “A lot of the townsfolk think he goes out there during the storms trying to drown.”
I knew better, though. I knew the best place in the world to try to breathe was beneath the water.
As the rain let up I started paddling back toward the cabin. It was late, around eleven at night when the rainclouds decided to move on to their next town. I tied the canoe up to the dock and ran my hands through my soaked hair, shaking off some of the excess water.
“Shit,” I mumbled to myself, freezing my ass off. I wanted nothing more than to walk into the cabin, change my clothes, and crawl into bed. Yet as I dragged myself closer to the cabin, my chest tightened, seeing someone lying on the porch swing, sleeping. Damn paparazzi. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d tried to camp out at the cabin to get information from me, but normally the town sheriff, Lucas, was good at getting them to stay away.
After hours and hours of solitude in the water, I couldn’t handle some creep sitting outside the cabin, taking photos of me.
I marched over to the porch and huffed. “Listen, you asshole. Don’t you have something better to do than take fucking pictures of—” My voice faltered off as a sleepy Maggie started to wake, alert and alarmed. She jumped in her seat a bit, startled, reaching for her neck. When her eyes locked with mine, her hands eased back.
“Maggie?” I choked out, almost doubting my words. My chest tightened more. “What the hell are you doing here?” I barked, a little confused, a little mad, but happy. Mostly happy.
So damn happy to see her.
She scrambled around her back, searching for something. When she came back up, she held a board in the air, and I began reading my own hand writing.
Someday you’re going to wake up and leave your house, Magnet, and you’re going to discover the world. Someday you’re going to see the whole wide world, Maggie May, and on that day, when you step outside and breathe in your first breath, I want you to find me. No matter what, find me, because I’m going to be the one to show it to you. I’m going to help you cross off your to-do list. I’m gonna show you the whole wide world.