The Words We Leave for Strangers.

Priya had worked the university library's return desk for three weeks before grief stopped following her into every quiet room. It was the third week, too, when she found the note.

Tucked into a worn copy of Pride and Prejudice, wedged between pages 214 and 215, was a single line in cramped, slanted handwriting:

If you're reading this, you're the kind of person who dog-ears their favorite lines instead of using a bookmark. I respect that. A fellow page-214 person.

She almost laughed the first unguarded sound she'd made in months. Her father had dog-eared every book he'd ever loved, a habit she'd inherited without meaning to, the same way she'd inherited his slow way of reading a sentence twice before letting it go. She hadn't touched his old paperbacks since the funeral. Hadn't been able to.

Sure enough, page 214 was folded down. Darcy's letter. Of course it was.

She sat with the note longer than she should have, thumb tracing the crease in the paper like it might tell her something about the person who'd written it patient enough to leave a note in a book they might never see returned, hopeful enough to believe someone would notice.

She found a pen before she'd decided to.

Guilty. My dad used to say a good book should look read, not preserved. He dog-eared everything. I never told him I did it too because I do until I stopped being able to tell him anything at all.

She stared at what she'd written, startled by her own honesty, and almost crossed it out. Instead, she folded the note, slid it back to page 214, and reshelved the book before she could change her mind.

Three days passed. She thought about it more than she wanted to admit wondered if the note would sit there for months, unread, the way some things just do. Then the book came back across her desk, checked out again, the same scrap of paper still tucked inside.

Beneath her words, in that same slanted hand, was a new line slower this time, like it had taken longer to write.

I'm sorry about your dad. I lost my mom two years ago, and the only thing that made the first year bearable was this book because she used to read me the ending every time I was sad, even though we both already knew how it went. I check this copy out once a month, hoping someone else needed it the way I did. You're the first person who ever wrote back. Thank you for that.

Priya read it twice. Then a third time. Something in her chest loosened that she hadn't realized was clenched.

She didn't reshelve the book. She checked it out under her own name, walked to the small reading nook by the window where the light came in gold in the afternoons, and sat with it open on her lap for a long time before she picked up her pen again.

I think we're the only two people in this city who still believe grief and love can live in the same sentence. I don't know your name. I don't know your face. But I know you dog-ear your favorite lines, and you understand what it means to keep loving someone by keeping their habits alive. That feels like more than most people learn about each other in months.

What's your name?

She hesitated, then added one more line, smaller, at the bottom of the page the kind of question you only ask a stranger because it's safer than asking someone real.

And does it get easier? The missing them, I mean. Be honest.

She left the book on the returns cart with a note taped to the cover: Hold for pickup mystery reader.

For the rest of her shift, every time the front door chimed, her heart moved before her eyes did.

to be continued... 📖💛