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“No. Well, yes, but notthat. They didn’t because of his secret. Eventually, though, they do have to have a kid to have someone carry on the family farms because that’s just how it worked back then. So, those are the real things that I have to include to make it feel real to the reader, but everything to me feels like it actually happened. It’s all very confusing.”

“It feels like it actually happened?”

“Yes, like I’m telling the story of these two women who were in the photo.”

“And the main character, her name is Deb?”

“Deborah Mary Wilson, yes.”

“What’s the name of the other character?”

“Harriet Louise Topper.”

Quinn swallowed, but her throat was dry despite her having just taken several drinks of her tea.

“What?” Abby asked when Quinn didn’t say anything.

“My mom’s middle name is Louise. They were going to name me that at one point instead of Elizabeth.”

“Oh, wow!” Abby said, lifting her cup off the desk.

“Yeah,” she replied, trying not to think too hard about the coincidence, even though there was something niggling at the back of her mind about it. “So, you want to keep them together?” she asked, changing the subject back to the book.

“Yes.”

“Well,canyou? They live in a small, rural community in the 30s. It’s not like there are social media photos with them all over the internet where someone could figure it out, right?”

“No, but is itrealisticfor them to grow old together when one of them is married, and eventually, the other one will probably get married off, too? So far, I’ve been able to avoid that because she’s sort of the forgotten child in the family, and no one really cares what she does.”

“It’syourending, right? If it feels like a real story to you, what is the story itself telling you actually happened?”

“That’s the problem…” Abby grunted, making Quinn wish she could hear that sound in another context entirely. “It hasn’t told me yet. Everything else, yes, but not how it all ends.”

“Maybe you just need to take some more time with it. It’s all come out of you so fast, but maybe the ending will take time.”

“I don’t exactly have a ton of that… I have a publisher expecting an outline and my pages.”

“Right. Well, maybe look at the photos again.”

“Huh?”

“The box out there. I was going to pull it back in here because no one seems to be interested in them anyway. Well, except for you.”

Quinn decided not to reveal that she wanted to pull them back becauseshewas interested in them now.

“Are there more of the two of them?”

“There are a lot of them in there. I’m not sure how many are of the two of them, though. And I kept a few outof the box. They were way too faded. One was almost solid black. No one would buy that anyway.”

“Can we?”

“Can we what?”

“Look at them now,” Abby said.

“Sure. I can–”

“I’ll get it,” Abby offered quickly before she stood and practically jogged to the front of the shop.