Flannel and Frost
Copyright© 2026 by Art Samms
Chapter 17
Ryan had intended to spend the morning assembling the last of the shelving brackets, but the idea that had taken hold of him last night—clear, insistent, impossible to ignore—had grown into something he could no longer put aside.
Shortly before noon, he sat at the counter with a sheet of thick stationary in front of him, his pen resting against his thumb. The shop was quiet. He could hear the sound of distant voices and trucks passing through town, but inside it felt like the world had narrowed to a single breath.
He read over what he’d already drafted, frowned, crumpled the page, and tossed it in the waste bin. Too formal. Too stiff. Too much like the person he had been, not the one he was trying to become.
He smoothed out a new sheet. Exhaled.
Then he began writing again.
Evelyn,
I listened to your newest story last night.
I’m not sure how to describe what it meant to me without sounding clumsy, so I’ll keep this simple.
Thank you.
For the way you read it.
For the way it felt honest.
For the way it felt like it was meant for anyone who’s ever forgotten how to trust themselves again.
I don’t know if I’m the traveler in your story, but I recognized parts of him.
The quiet parts.
The uncertain parts.
The ones that are trying to build something steady.
I wanted to apologize again—for the assumptions I made when I first arrived, and for the ways I’ve misunderstood you since. I’m trying to get better at reaching out instead of closing off. You’ve helped me more than you know.
I’m not very good at saying things the right way, but I hope this letter says enough.
—Ryan
When he finished, he let the pen fall from his hand. The letter lay before him—short, imperfect, but real. More honest than anything he’d written in years.
He folded it carefully into an envelope, smoothing the crease with his thumb, sealing the flap before he could hesitate. He wrote her name across the front—Evelyn McAllister—and stared at the letters until they stopped swimming.
This couldn’t wait. Not until evening. Not until tomorrow. Not even until he finished the shelves.
He stood, grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair, and crossed the shop to the front door. He flipped the sign hanging there to reveal the small handwritten message he’d prepared earlier:
BACK SOON
The words swung slightly on their string as he locked the door behind him.
Envelope in hand, heart unsteady but determined, Ryan stepped out into the bright afternoon and started down the road—headed to carry out the mission he should have taken on weeks ago.
The library was quiet in the soft, early-afternoon way it always was—sunlight filtering through the tall windows in long, warm stripes, the scent of old bindings and pine polish drifting through the open aisles. Ryan paused at the threshold, hand tightening around the envelope in his jacket pocket.
He hoped Evelyn wasn’t here. He wasn’t ready for that kind of courage. He stepped inside with little in the way of ceremony. The familiar bell chimed overhead, bright and delicate.
No sign of her at the front desk. Relief loosened something in his stomach.
He moved farther in, scanning the open floor. Only two voices carried through the stacks—low, animated. He recognized them immediately: Tori’s unmistakable energy and Sadie’s calm, steady counterpoint.
They were tucked deep in one of the history aisles, completely absorbed in conversation about something involving shelving mishaps and an overdue interlibrary loan request. Neither spared a glance in his direction.
Thank God.
If either one of them caught even a whiff of a letter in his possession, they’d probably tackle him before he reached the desk and demand a reading.
He slipped quietly toward the back of the library—toward the special collection shelf where Evelyn kept the rare volumes she handled with something borderline reverent. His pulse picked up as he scanned the spines.
There it was. The book she once mentioned loving—offhandedly, but with a softness he still remembered.
A weathered, deep-green hardback with faint gold embossing: Journeys Beyond the Meridian.
She’d spoken of it in passing one afternoon while shelving returns: “It’s not valuable. Just rare in the way beloved things often are.”
He slid it carefully from the shelf, feeling the faint grit of its aged cloth cover beneath his fingers. For a moment, he just held it, thumb tracing the worn edge.
Then he opened to the middle, hesitated only a heartbeat, and tucked the envelope inside. It disappeared between the pages with a quiet whisper.
Done. No going back now.
He carried the book to the front desk, keeping his steps casual, trying not to hold it like contraband.
Sadie and Tori were still deep in conversation out of sight.
Good.
He placed the book gently back on the shelf, spine facing outward, the envelope hidden safely inside. He didn’t leave a note or explanation—just the book, its presence subtle enough not to raise immediate suspicion, but placed where Evelyn would inevitably find it.
His heart thudded hard once—twice.
He turned and walked out of the library with careful calm ... only to let out a shaky exhale the instant the door closed behind him.
Now all he could do was wait.
And hope that at some point—later today, tomorrow, whenever Evelyn drifted back to that favorite shelf—her hands would find the book.
And then the letter.
Two days slipped by before Evelyn finally had a quiet hour to herself in the library—an hour without Sadie’s gentle questions, without Tori’s fizzing, unstoppable curiosity, without patrons asking about printer jams or misplaced novels. The afternoon light was soft, and the library felt hushed, almost reverent.
She wandered the aisles in that aimless way she did sometimes when her thoughts were too tangled to sit still. Her steps led her, unconsciously, to the special collection shelves. She paused when she saw one book slightly out of alignment.
A familiar deep-green spine.
Journeys Beyond the Meridian.
Something tugged at her chest—nostalgia, maybe. Or the memory of a quiet conversation with a man who always looked like he wanted to say more than he allowed himself.
She reached for the book and felt instantly the difference: its weight shifted oddly, like something had been tucked inside.
Evelyn frowned, carefully opening it.
The envelope fell into her hand. Her breath caught. Her name—written in a precise, earnest hand she thought she recognized, but wasn’t sure.
She looked around the aisle. Empty. Every corner still and silent.
She opened the envelope.
As she began to read, the world seemed to narrow to the words on the page—the careful, vulnerable lines, each one sounding unmistakably like Ryan’s voice. His sincerity. His quiet hope. His admission of fear and loneliness. His gratitude for her presence in his life, however small he’d allowed it to be. His apology—not for what he’d done, but for what he’d kept locked away. And beneath all of it, threaded between every sentence, something gentle and unguarded.
Her throat tightened.
Halfway down the page, her vision blurred. She blinked, a tear slipping free, falling onto the paper without a sound. Another followed, then a third—soft, clean tears that held no sadness, only the ache of being seen. The relief of recognition. The tenderness of someone finally reaching across the quiet distance between them.
She pressed the letter lightly to her chest.
“Ryan...” she whispered into the hush, not as a question but as an exhale of something long held back.
More tears came, but they didn’t sting. They warmed. They softened her.
When she read the last line, her hand trembled—not with fear, but with a kind of fragile hope she hadn’t let herself feel in years.
She folded the letter carefully, reverently, and held it against her heart.
For a long while, she simply stood there alone between the shelves, tears drying on her cheeks, the sound of her own breathing the only thing marking time.
Not sadness. Never sadness.
Something beginning.
Evelyn didn’t even think about it.
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