Things We Never Said
Chapter 2 · 1 min read · Isabel Rowan
The following morning, Sophie found a paper bag hanging from the front door. Inside were two warm croissants, a jar of blackberry jam and a note with only three words: Welcome home, Soph.
It was the name Noah had given her in a summer that seemed now to belong to two different people. She took the breakfast to the kitchen and tried not to remember how fiercely she had once loved this place.
By noon the estate agent had called twice. The buyers wanted an answer before Friday. Sophie told herself the offer was sensible, generous, final. Then she heard a melody slipping through the open window from Noah’s flower shop.
It was a simple piano arrangement she had written as a teenager and never shared with anyone except him. Her hands curled against the edge of the counter. She had believed she was the only person left who remembered it.
She crossed the garden and pushed open the shop door. Behind a wall of pale peonies, Noah looked up. “That song,” she said. “Where did you find it?”
He reached under the counter and produced a single page of manuscript paper, creased at every corner. At the bottom was her old signature and a heart drawn by someone who had once thought promises were easy.