Krista read, then swallowed hard. Isabel wrote that she’d gone back home because she had to—back to her mother, family, her name, her obligations.
Weeks later, after Isabel had nursed her mother back to health, her father finally dropped the issue. He wouldn’t force the arranged marriage as long as Isabel never disappeared again.
Krista flipped to the end of the diary. One last line sat there alone, almost like a postscript. The ink was lighter, as if Isabel had paused a long time before writing it.
“Love does not only grant us the freedom to run, but also the courage to stay.”
She read it again.
And again.
Running with Joe. Staying for her grandparents.
Europe or Maple Falls. Dreams or duty.
Freedom or the kind of love that meant showing up, again and again. Even when it broke you open.
FORTY
JOE
Thursday, Two Weeks Later
Joe should’ve been in love with every second of it.
Rome was everything he’d imagined and then some: the soft rain on cobblestones, laundry strung between narrow streets, history layered in every stone. He’d already explored the charming, narrow streets of Trastevere, captured the beauty of the gardens at Villa Borghese, and tasted his way through the market, Mercato di Testaccio.
It was a photojournalist’s dream. Even his espresso looked photogenic.
And yet his camera sat idle on the outdoor café table.
A fountain burbled in the piazza, tourists clustered around it snapping pictures. A dog napped in a patch of sun near a flower stall.
It should’ve thrilled him. On paper, it was perfect.
He lifted the camera out of habit and framed the scene, the cobbles, a fountain, a woman laughing as she tried to wrangle her kids into a photo. The shutter clicked.
He checked the back of the camera.
The exposure was right. The composition was fine. The color, the texture, the moment…it all worked.
And it felt completely hollow.
He tried again at the market later that week, lining up crates of tomatoes and peaches, but even that felt flat. Another day, he waited for the exact angle of light on a café doorway that reminded him of the Hideaway. In Florence, he shot a stone fountain that could’ve been Maple Falls’s smaller, fussier cousin.
Every time, it was the same result. The photo was technically solid, but emotionally it felt flat.
They weren’t his stories. They weren’t her stories.
Joe sat back in his chair now, the metal a little too cold against his shoulders despite the Roman heat, and opened his laptop. He told himself he’d cull the latest batch, pick ten or twelve frames to send to Marcus and draft a rough pitch about “hidden European corners.”
Instead, his cursor drifted.
Maple Falls—Feature.
He hesitated only a second before double-clicking.
Photos filled the screen: Krista on the Hideaway dock at sunrise, hair pulled up, camera strap cutting across her chest as she laughed at something he’d said. Alice leaning over a churn, ice cream splattering her apron. Walt’s hands on a boat rope, knuckles nicked and steady. Zoe and Jackson silhouetted on the ridge. The cave—lantern light turning damp rock into something almost holy.
