Chapter 12: Own Words

I wrote three drafts, and every one of them was somebody else's.

The first was in the bookshop, on the back of a receipt.

"Tobias, I have realized that what I feel for you is something I can no longer ignore."

I read it to Noelle, who had come to help me shelve.

"That's a poem," she said. "It's by a dead man. It's about a lake."

I crossed it out.

The second I wrote in the car, on my phone, and read aloud to Dennis at a red light.

"I've been told you are the best thing that ever happened to this house, and I believe it."

Dennis kept his eyes on the road.

"Mrs. Renner," he said, "that's a review of a hotel."

"It was four point nine stars."

"It's a very good hotel."

The third draft went on index cards, which I carried in my cardigan pocket for a day.

I had it down to six lines. I was proud of it.

I handed the stack to Pearl on the stairs.

She read the top card with her glasses on the end of her nose.

"Two stars," she said. "That's my line. I said that to my husband in nineteen sixty-one."

"It worked, didn't it?"

"It worked on a man who was already in love with me," she said.

"That is the only kind it works on. So what is your problem?"

I told her I had run out of words that were mine.

Pearl took off her glasses and looked at me for a long moment.

"Hallie," she said. "You've never run out of words in your life."

"You argued a tailor out of a hem. You told the board member at table nineteen his tie was a two."

"It was a two."

"It was a one. You were being kind."

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