Chapter 7 The email arrived like a quiet miracle.
Clara was lying on her bed, phone pressed to her ear, listening as Peter read the author’s words aloud again slowly this time, as if pacing them might soften their weight.
“He says he’s done writing,” Peter finished, his voice low. “No more books. No answers. Nothing.”
For a moment, Clara didn’t respond. Her excitement had flared the instant Peter said he replied, because for years the silence had been absolute. To know that the man behind the words still existed, that he had fingers, a keyboard, a pulse, felt like proof that the world wasn’t entirely indifferent.
But the thrill dimmed just as quickly.
“So… that’s it?” she asked quietly. “He won’t answer anything?”
“He says he won’t,” Peter replied. “At least not in writing.”
There was something unfinished about that last line, something that snagged in Clara’s chest.
After they hung up, she sat up on her bed and opened her laptop. Her inbox stared back at her, bare except for old sent messages and emails she’d written carefully, thoughtfully, never expecting a reply. She scrolled through them, rereading her own words, the way they shifted between curiosity and desperation.
Then she opened a new message.
Her fingers hovered for a long moment before she began to type to the same author.
She wrote honestly. She wrote carefully. She wrote as someone who knew what it meant to love something that could not love you back.
She told him that someone important had read the book because of her, and that he had received a response where she never had. She said she wasn’t asking for answers for publication or validation, only for closure. She listed the questions she had carried quietly for years, the ones that lived between the lines of his book. She asked, gently, whether he would ever write again.
When she finished, she read it twice. Then three times.
Still uncertain, she called Peter.
She read the email aloud, her voice barely above a whisper, as though the author himself might be listening.
When she finished, there was a pause on the other end.
“I think you should send it,” Peter said finally. “If he answers, great. If he doesn’t… at least you tried.”
So she sent it.
It was nearly one in the morning when they finally said goodnight, their voices softer now, heavier with sleep. Clara closed her laptop and lay back, staring at the ceiling long after the room had gone quiet.
She didn’t expect anything to come of it.
She woke the next morning to sunlight spilling across her bed and the faint hum of life moving through the house. Still half-asleep, she reached for her laptop, more out of habit than hope.
And then, she saw it. The author had replied.
A new message.
Her breath caught so sharply it hurt.
Her hands shook as she opened the email immediately.
I cannot answer your questions at least not in writing, it began. To do so would constitute a secret, one you might publish or share. Not that I distrust you, but how could I trust you? I do not know you.
Her eyes raced down the screen.
However, should you ever find yourself in Amsterdam, do pay a visit at your leisure.
For a long moment, Clara simply stared.
Then she screamed.
It tore out of her before she could stop. It was raw, sharp, uncontainable.
Her mother was in her room within seconds, fear written across her face. “Clara! What’s wrong? Are you …..”
“Mom,” Clara said breathlessly, already thrusting the laptop toward her. “Look. Just look.”
Her mother read the email slowly, her brow furrowing, then lifting.
“He wants you to visit him,” she said.
“Yes,” Clara said, nodding too fast. “Yes. He wants to see me. He’ll answer my questions. He’ll Mom, I have to go. I have to.”
Her excitement bubbled over, spilling into wild possibilities. Amsterdam. The author. Answers she’d waited years for.
Then the room went quiet.
Her mother didn’t speak immediately. She sat down beside Clara and closed the laptop gently.
“Sweetheart,” she said softly, “you know we can’t afford that.”
The words landed like a slow, sinking weight.
Clara’s smile faltered.
“I know,” she said, swallowing. “I just thought… maybe…”
“I’m so sorry,” her mother said, pulling her into a hug. “I wish I could say yes.”
Clara nodded against her shoulder, forcing the disappointment down where it wouldn’t show. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “I understand.”
But the dream lingered, aching and unfinished.
She didn’t tell Peter.
Not that day.
The next morning, they met after the support group, stepping out into the crisp air together. The meeting had been ordinary from shared stories, quiet nods, to laughter threaded with sadness.
Peter teased her about zoning out during someone’s dramatic monologue. She rolled her eyes and shot back that at least she wasn’t flirting with the coffee machine again.
They grabbed food, sat across from each other, knees brushing under the table. They laughed easily, the kind of laughter that felt earned. Clara watched the way Peter smiled when he wasn’t thinking, how his eyes softened when he listened.
She almost told him.
The words hovered at the back of her throat every time he looked at her too long.
But she didn’t.
For now, the email belonged to her alone, a fragile, glowing thing she wasn’t ready to hand over.
As they parted ways that afternoon, Clara felt it again, the sense that something had shifted, quietly, irreversibly.
Some stories, she knew, didn’t reveal their turning
points until much later.
And this was only the beginning.