ONE YEAR LATER
Iris knelt in the garden.
Her flower beds were coming to life as the days grew warmer and longer, and the first green unfurling of vegetables was breaking the soil. She smiled as she plucked weeds from the aster and daisy patches, and then she shifted to the rows of dirt, feeling how dry the soil was.
She was just about to rise and fetch her water pail when a triangular folded piece of paper crashed into the loam, right at her knees.
Iris glanced up, not at all surprised to see Roman regarding her from the second story window. His elbow was propped on the open sill, his chin on his palm, and he only smiled as he waited for her to read his message.
“Are they ready for me?” she called up.
“You’ll have to read the note to find out.”
She scowled up at him, but it was playful, and she enjoyed their games as much as he did. She took the paper in her dirt-stained hands and unfolded it, reading:
Dear Iris,
I’m sure they’re an absolute waste, but here are waiting for you on the kitchen table. If you hurry, the perfectly* brewed pot of tea will still be warm.
Love,
Your Favorite
Kitt
*always up for debate
P.S. If I hand over too many pages at one time, I have an inkling my dense prose will put you to sleep, Winnow.
Iris smiled, but when she looked back to the window, Roman was gone. If she listened, though, she could hear the metallic clink of his typewriter as he returned to his manuscript. She could hear the birds flit through the shrubs and sing from the willow tree in the neighbors’ yard. She could hear the distant rapids of the river, which was a short walk from their tiny town house, a stone, ivy-laden structure that had withstood the bombings, located on the edge of the park.
Iris tucked the page into her pocket and rose.
She knocked the dirt from her coveralls and left her boots at the back stoop, stepping inside the very cramped but cozy kitchen.
On the table, she found here tucked beneath the corner of her typewriter, just as Roman had promised, and a pot of tea that still steamed. Iris poured herself a cup, stirred in far too much milk and honey, and then sat in her favorite chair and read Roman’s pages.
They were beautiful, transportive. Every time Iris read a new chapter of his, she felt as if she belonged within the story. It was about a boy who sailed a ship in the clouds, and the adventures and challenges and friends he met along the way. It was not always a happy story, although it was an honest one, and hope never faded for the boy and his friends, even in their moments of loss and grief.
She also found two typos and had three questions about a side character’s motivations, and so she took up the fountain pen Roman had left beside the teapot, and she wrote them down on the page margins. Sometimes she thought he intentionally left typos behind, just to see if she would catch them.
She always did.
Tea drained to the dregs, Iris gathered up the pages and climbed the stairs to Roman’s favorite place to write, which was a small nook of a bedroom at the back of the house, with a view of the river and Iris’s garden. The door was cracked and she nudged it open farther; he was sitting at his desk, his fingers flying over the keys of the First Alouette.
“They’re rubbish, aren’t they?” He turned in the chair to gaze at her, a tendril of black hair cutting across his brow. “I need to start over entirely.”
“On the contrary,” Iris said, walking to him. She set the pages down on the table, next to his medicine. Bottles of pills, tins of salves, and the oil that he mixed in the steam kettle to inhale when his throat constricted or his cough worsened. Treatments that helped calm and soothe his lungs and airways but couldn’t heal the damage that had been done to them.
Iris leaned down to brush her lips against his cheekbone, following it up to his ear. She whispered, “They might be my favorite yet.”
“Don’t tease me,” he replied, but there was yearning in his voice. He lifted his hand and wove his fingers in her hair, to keep her close.
“I’m not. You’ll find my notes in the margins.”
She kissed his palm as he reluctantly let her go. But she knew he preferred to read her feedback in private, so she moved toward the door, picking up two empty teacups on her way out.
“And don’t forget, we’re having dinner with your mum and nan at six tonight, and then Attie’s concert is at eight. Tobias is picking us up.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Roman said, but he often lost track of time when he wrote.
“Oh, and one last thing, Kitt?”
“What’s that, Winnow?”
Just before she shut the door, Iris said, “Check your left pocket.”
Roman shouldn’t have been surprised. Iris was always one step ahead of him. But he laughed as she shut the door, and then he faced the dilemma of reading her feedback first or checking his left pocket for whatever she had craftily slipped in there that morning.
He decided to read her feedback first, thankful she caught his typos and then mulling over her other notes. He scrawled down a few other questions to ask her later, and then he reached into his pocket.
His fingers met a crinkle of paper, folded so tiny he would have never found it until laundry day.
Roman drew it out to the light. A note with typed words that said:
This is not the true message but a prequel. You’ll find the other in our wardrobe, hidden in the pocket of your red coat jacket.
—I.W.K.
P.S. This only applies if you gave me new chapters today. If not, expect me to beg for them tonight … in bed.
Roman smiled. He decided he was done for the day and rose, following Iris’s intriguing message down the stairs and into their bedroom. They only had one wardrobe in this house, and they shared it, their clothes packed tightly together. But Roman found his dark red jacket, and the letter Iris had just typed, tucked within the pocket.
He carried the folded page into the kitchen, so he could see her though the open doorway. She was weeding the garden, her braid falling over her shoulder, nearly touching the ground as she bent.
Sometimes, she distracted him when he was trying to write, but most of the time, he felt a deep sense of peace and comfort when he was in her presence. When he looked at her, watching her go about simple but lovely everyday tasks. When she sat in her favorite chair by the hearth and read to him in the evenings. When she woke in the mornings—always after him—and when she stole most of the blankets at night. When she came home from the Inkridden Tribune, smelling of newspapers and spilled coffee, full of brilliant ideas.
And that, he had come to realize, was when his best words emerged.
When he was with her.
Roman unfolded the paper. He, of course, would always let her have the last word, and he read:
Dear Roman,
Books are difficult things to write, or so I hear. As the author, you will love the words one day, and despise them the next. But I’m going to echo what a very smart, very handsome, and very infuriating former rival once said to me:
“Keep writing. You will find the words you need to share. They are already within you, even in the shadows, hiding like jewels. —C.”
I look forward to the next chapter. The one you will write in your story, as well as the one we write together.
Love,
Iris
P.S. Impossible, Kitt.
