“Packed?” she asked, hating the way her tongue got caught around the middle letters. It didn’t matter that she had known Tyler all her life, nor that he understood where her speech impediment had come from. The blush on her cheek was just as embarrassing as always.

“The train leaves in just over an hour,” he replied, opening the biscuit tin and peering inside before taking out a handful of custard creams. “I assumed you’d be ready?”

Emily gave a shake of her head, eyes darting around the kitchen as if somewhere was hidden a clue, a hint, as to what he was talking about. The bookseller had said she would know, that she would understand.

Surely not, Emily thought as she began to pace around the room, looking over at Tyler, then across at the clock hanging above the sink, then back at Tyler again.

Although sending a chaperone would be exactly the kind of thing her grandmother would do. Her way of ensuring Emily would go through with the task at hand and not hide away under the cover of ignorance. Just like sending that man and his Dalmatian, she had decided to send Tyler. But what Emily couldn’t figure out was, of all people, why him?

“No, as in you’re not packed?” Tyler asked as he watched Emily’s frantic pacing. “Or no, you’re not coming?”

Emily stopped. She leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. She was no longer a child in a wheelchair who needed doctors and adults to decide what was best. Now she was a grown woman, yet apparently still deemed incapable of making her own choices.

Tyler kept talking as she escaped into her grandmother’s study. He followed her into the small, dark space that was dominated by a wall of books and a mahogany desk by the back window where an old-fashioned typewriter sat neatly in the middle. Emily approached it and tapped a steady beat of two keys, which she struck over and over. Tyler came up to peer over her shoulder.

“NONONONONONONONONONONONON…” he read out loud, and Emily turned around to face him. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then realized she had completely forgotten whatever it was she was about to say, or even if she had intended to speak at all.

Images swam in her mind; memories she did not want to recall, including one of the way he had looked at her the first time they met after the accident. With a mixture of fear and pity, he’d clearly tried not to stare at the huge gash across one side of her face, or the metal structure which held her skull together but also prevented her from speaking. At the wheelchair that held her captive while her spine tried to heal. She remembered how he had stood, half hidden behind his mother, hands shoved deep in pockets and one foot scuffing the ground. Then he had turned and ran to the other end of his garden, scaled the ladder hanging from a low-slung branch, up into a treehouse where the two of them used to play as kids, and refused to come down, even when called in for supper.