All was well, the two of them settling back into their hive of creativity, shutting out the world in favor of make-believe. Emily was content in her routine of old, waking each morning to eggs for breakfast, followed by a walk along the beach, then back to work on the next drawing, the next idea. She had been happy to continue freelancing, to wait for her grandmother to share her story.

Until one morning Catriona stumbled on her way back from church, bumped her hip and said it was nothing to worry about, just a bruise. But the bruise had spread and the ache had deepened, and the doctors confirmed that the cancer was back, more furious than before.

That was when Emily stopped painting for other people and decided instead to create pictures for her grandmother. Pictures from books they had read, classics and comedy alike. Her own interpretation of Elizabeth and Darcy, Romeo and Juliet, Heathcliff and Cathy.

Seascapes, forests, and imaginary worlds. Portraits of Golum, Dracula, and even Mr. Potter. Anything and everything she could possibly conjure from her mind, thinking it was a way to block out what they both knew would eventually come.

What on earth was she supposed to draw now?

Unbeknownst to her, Tyler sat, watching her draw. He noticed how her features had relaxed, the frown turned smooth, and all the tension surrounding her scar had disappeared. It helped him to remember the girl she used to be, the one who taught him what it meant to never be afraid to try.

10

PARAKEET

Melopsittacus undulatus

Tucked away in the corner of a side street in Paris, there sits a bookshop that has become something of a legend among literary enthusiasts.

Shakespeare & Company has a green façade, battered wooden shelves set outside on the pavement, a chalkboard adorned with quotes and facts of old, and a square portrait of the Bard himself, hung above the door.

Does it still look the same? Emily wondered as she crossed over the threshold, breathed in the comforting scent of books. She felt the weight of all those words, some new, some ancient, that filled the minds of people from every part of the world.

She wished she could ask her grandmother how it had felt when she was there—swap notes to see if the stacks of books, strewn higgledy-piggledy on every available surface, the faint smell of peppermint, the brown linoleum floor, if it was all different, or exactly as it used to be.

“Who do we ask?” Tyler called out to Emily as she passed underneath the sign from her grandmother’s diary. She simply shook her head in response.

Not yet, she thought as she negotiated the narrow steps to the upper floor, discovered a trio of girls, their blond heads bent over a book, huddled in a tiny reading alcove set into one wall.

Emily caught her breath as she spied a gray plastic typewriter sitting atop a makeshift desk. Two of the keys were missing and the rest of it was stuck together with tape.