Page 1 of Soul to Possess (The Artmaker Trilogy #1)

I used to think silence was peace. That stillness meant safety. That quiet could be a balm. But I was wrong. Silence is only comforting when there’s someone on the other side of it. Now, it’s just... the hollow echo of my own breath.

I live in a town so small, you can drive through it without realizing you ever arrived. The kind of place where time doesn’t just move slow—it curdles. Where smiles are tight, conversations are shallow, and the air always smells faintly of rot and old pine.

Virginia in early spring is wet, stubborn, and moody. The sky can’t decide whether it’s done with winter, or still grieving something no one talks about. The trees are bare, but not beautiful. Just brittle. Like they’ve been holding their breath too long.

I know the feeling. The heater kicks on with a violent clunk, rattling through the walls like something trying to escape. I’m still curled on the secondhand loveseat in the living room, knees tucked under a blanket that doesn’t match the couch or anything else in this house. I haven’t turned on a light. There’s no need. Dim gray is all I need to see.

On the coffee table, a mug of tea has gone cold. The surface is skimmed with a thin film, forgotten. I reach for it anyway, more out of habit than hope. Everything I do now is out of habit. Breathing. Working. Waiting. Existing.

The mail came an hour ago. I didn’t check it until now. A single envelope, a local paper, a grocery flyer. Junk. All of it. But something about the weight of the paper felt heavier today. I don’t know why. I unfold the newspaper lazily, expecting the same obituaries and high school football drama.

But something catches my eye. Tucked in the back pages of the newspaper—between listings for used farm equipment and church bake sales—a small, boxed ad sat nestled in the "Personals" column. No fanfare. No bold headline. Just this:

No headline. Just a block of bold text. Centered. Typewritten. Precise.

“Widowed rancher in South Dakota seeks woman willing to relocate. This is not a dating ad. I’m not looking for games or fantasies. I want a partner. A quiet life. A reason to cook breakfast for someone again. I have room. Land. Dogs. Horses. Reading Space. You’d have your own room to start. We take it slow. Write me a letter if you’re curious.”

No phone number. Just a PO Box. My chest tightens. Not in that romantic way. Not in a flutter. It’s sharper than that. Like the edge of something I buried long ago just pierced the surface again. Who still writes letters? Who asks for slowness? Who says partner instead of wife, or girl, or soulmate?

I reread the clipping. Again. And again. My hand trembles slightly, the way it does when I forget to eat. But I’ve eaten today. This is something else. Something raw. I don’t believe in fate. Not anymore. But I believe in accidents that feel like fate. I believe in paper cuts that bleed more than they should.

This ad is both. I should throw it away. Burn it. It’s insane. A scam. Or worse. But instead—I go to the kitchen and pull out a notebook I haven’t touched in three years. It still smells faintly of dust and lemon cleaner. I write the word Hello. And from there, I don’t stop. Not for a long time.

Hello.

To the man in South Dakota,

I don’t know what made me read your ad three times in a row. Maybe it was the way you didn’t pretend. Or the way it didn’t sound like a man trying to sell himself. You didn’t write it like a trap, or a fantasy. You just said what you wanted. Plain and bare.

I miss plain. I’ve spent a long time in a world where everyone wears ten masks, and love sounds like a marketing campaign. Everyone’s trying to be desirable. You weren’t. You were just… honest. I won’t pretend I’m something I’m not either.

I’m thirty-one. I live in a rented house that smells like mildew when it rains. I work a job that drains me so dry, sometimes I come home and stare at the ceiling for hours because I can’t figure out what else to do. I have no husband, no children, no dog. I had a fish once, but it died when the power went out and the water got too cold.

I don’t know what I expected life to be. Not this. I’m not conventionally beautiful. I wear my hair up most days, because it’s easier than seeing what it looks like down. I’m too quiet in public and too loud in my own head. But if you’re really looking for someone to cook breakfast for…

Maybe I’m the kind of person who remembers how people like their eggs.

Maybe I’m someone who still believes in long silences that don’t have to be filled. Maybe I’m still brave enough—just barely—to write this letter and send it, even if nothing comes of it.

So…If you're real, and you're still reading…

Write me back.

I’m not asking for magic. Just something honest.

—Genevieve

P.S. I like black coffee, thunderstorms, and books that ruin me. I hate the sound of ticking clocks and I haven’t danced in five years. Make of that what you will.

I folded the letter three times—neat, precise, like I could control something—and slipped it into the envelope. Then I froze. Return address. My hand hovered over the top left corner, pen tip trembling. Writing it down felt like peeling back skin. Like giving away the part of myself I usually keep hidden. What if he laughed? What if he showed someone? What if nothing came back? But if I didn’t include it… he couldn’t reply.

And I wanted him to. God, I wanted him to. So I wrote it. Slowly. In my cleanest handwriting. Not the address to my home—no. That felt too bare. I gave Maddie’s instead. She’d understand. Or pretend to, which was almost the same. Then I sealed the envelope. Dust and glue and the tiniest taste of courage.

Outside, the sky had that spring grayness that pressed down without breaking open. Virginia was cold this time of year—not Wisconsin cold, but enough to bite. I pulled my threadbare sweater tighter and told myself I wasn’t being dramatic. It wasn’t just a letter. It was a line thrown into the dark. A dare.

The post office was four blocks away. I walked instead of driving. The letter was light in my pocket, but it felt heavy, like something alive.

I passed Mrs. Erwin’s flower shop and didn’t look in. Not because I wasn’t curious—because I was. I always slowed down just a little when I smelled soil and stems and something blooming. But I’d made the mistake of going in once last year. I’d asked how much a single daffodil cost, and the clerk said, “You don’t want just one, do you?” with this kind of laugh that made me feel like my loneliness had teeth.

Now I just passed by. Two blocks later, I paused at the corner where the old school stood abandoned. Red bricks chipped raw. The rusted fence still half-standing. I used to come here at night and sit on the swing set behind the cafeteria, just to hear the creak of chains and pretend I was someone still small enough to be carried.

I hadn’t told anyone that. Ever. I crossed the street without looking both ways. Maybe part of me hoped something would force the moment—make the decision for me. But no cars came. Nothing ever does, in this town. At the post office, I stood in front of the mailbox with my fingers clenched around the envelope.

It would be so easy not to. Easy to take it home, slide it into a drawer. Pretend I’d mailed it. Lie to myself. Again. But I didn’t. I fed the letter into the dark metal mouth and heard the thunk as it landed. And that sound was louder than it should’ve been.

I stayed there a second longer than I should’ve, staring at the mailbox like it could give me something back. It didn’t. Just swallowed the letter whole, like it had a thousand others.

When I finally turned to leave, Maddie’s car was already idling at the curb. Her little rust-pocked Honda looked like it was held together by bumper stickers and spite. She leaned out the window, hair pulled up in a messy knot, sunglasses too big for her face.

“Tell me that was what I think it was,” she said.

I slid into the passenger seat, still trying to catch up to her energy. “Define what you think it was.” She gave me a look. “A letter. To a stranger. From an ad you found in an actual newspaper, like it’s 1997. You’re not subtle, G.”

“I didn’t say I was trying to be.” I tugged the seatbelt, clicking it into place. “And it wasn’t just an ad.” Maddie snorted. “It’s never just an ad. It’s a cry for help printed in ink. So. Spill.”

She’d been like this since we were seventeen—part sarcasm, part lifeline. The kind of person who could talk you out of drinking bleach and into dyeing your hair blue instead. She found me when I didn’t know I needed finding—sophomore year, bathroom stall, eyeliner smudged, trying to disappear.

And she didn’t let me.

“You gonna judge me?” I asked quietly.

She turned the radio down. “Never for wanting something real. Just maybe for mailing your return address to a potential axe murderer.”

I smiled. It felt cracked. “I used yours.”

She paused. Then: “Good. I always wanted to be a part of your true crime documentary.”

We didn’t say anything for a moment. Just the sound of the heater groaning and some indie band singing about ghosts and regrets. Then Maddie reached over and laced her fingers through mine, like she always did when she sensed I was sinking.

“You’re not crazy, Gennie. You’re just brave in ways most people never have to be.” I looked out the window. The sky hadn’t changed. But something in me had. A tiny shift. Like a seed under soil, cracking open.

She drove toward the diner without asking if I was hungry. Maddie always knew when I needed to be somewhere with noise and light and coffee that tasted like burnt earth. We pulled into the same cracked parking lot we always did, the yellow lines long since faded to ghosts.

Inside, the booths were half full—truckers, old couples, a girl in scrubs scrolling her phone with one hand, toast in the other. We slid into the corner booth. Maddie always took the outside so I could sit with my back to the wall.

She used to say it was a “trauma-informed seating plan.” I didn’t correct her.

“You gonna tell me what he said that got under your skin?” she asked after the waitress poured our coffee.

I blinked at the cup. “It wasn’t what he said. It was what he didn’t.”

Maddie tilted her head.

I stirred cream into my coffee even though I never drank it that way. “He didn’t use clichés. Didn’t ask for nudes or list his requirements like it was a job interview. He said something about wanting someone to build a life with. Someone who’d stay even when things weren’t good.”

Maddie was quiet for a long beat.

“That sounds like what you used to write in your notebook. Freshman year. Back when you were still trying to pretend you didn’t care that no one sat with you at lunch.”

I gave a soft laugh. “You remember that?”

“I remember everything,” she said. “I remember the first time I saw you on the roof of the school library, not jumping, just sitting. Like you wanted the wind to do something for you that you couldn’t ask for.”

My throat burned.

“I remember you had those cheap earbuds and played the same six sad songs over and over. You said they made you feel less alone. And when I asked to listen, you handed them to me like it was sacred.”

“It was,” I whispered.

Maddie smiled, soft. “You’ve always wanted love to feel like survival. Like something you earn with your whole damn self.”

I looked down at the chipped mug in my hands. “Do you think that’s pathetic?”

“I think that’s human,” she said. “And I think you’ve always had more fight in you than anyone gives you credit for.”

The jukebox near the register clicked over to a new song—something old and low and smoky. A man singing about redemption like it was something you had to bleed for. I didn’t say anything for a while. But the letter was already out there. Floating in a world bigger than mine. And maybe, just maybe, it would find someone who saw me the way Maddie did—like I was worth answering.