Page 2 of Soul to Possess (The Artmaker Trilogy #1)

By the time the tenth morning dawned, I had stopped pretending I wasn’t checking the mailbox.

I hadn’t meant to count the days. But there they were, tucked into my spine like splinters—each one sharper than the last. Each walk down the gravel shoulder of my street, past the neighbor’s collapsed fence and the junk car with ivy growing through the hood, I told myself: It’s fine if nothing’s there.

But I always looked. And when the box yawned open to nothing but grocery flyers and bills, I told myself again: You’re ridiculous.

It was just a letter. You probably spelled the address wrong anyway.

But on that morning—the tenth—it was there.

A single envelope. Cream-colored. Bent at one corner.

My name on the front in a heavy, unfamiliar hand.

I didn’t open it right away. Instead, I closed the mailbox carefully, like I might wake something if I banged it too loudly.

I slid the letter into my coat pocket and walked back home from Maddie’s slower than usual, the wind cutting across my cheekbones.

It stung, but I liked it. Pain meant I wasn’t dreaming.

Inside, I didn’t take off my coat. I sat down on the edge of the tub—of all places—and pulled the letter out like it was something sacred.

I traced his handwriting first. The curves and pressure of it.

Nothing practiced. Nothing showy. Just… deliberate.

Gennie, I stared at your envelope for a long time before opening it. Not because I was suspicious. Because it’s rare to get something real anymore. It felt real. You did. What made you write me?

You’re the first person who’s written me without trying to sell themselves. Most people tell me what they think I want to hear. Like I’m shopping for a woman, and they’re listing features. You didn’t do that. You wrote like someone who meant it. Who wanted to be known.

I don’t know what you look like, and I’m not asking. Not yet. What I know is this: you said you’re tired of being alone. Me too.

I live on a ranch my grandfather left me.

I run it mostly alone now. Horses, chickens, stubborn old dogs.

I don’t go into town unless I have to. I don’t like crowds, or noise, or liars.

But I miss having someone in the kitchen.

I miss laughter that doesn’t come from a screen.

I miss hands reaching for mine when I’m not at my best. I want a life built from quiet things.

Routines. Trust. Loyalty. I’m not offering fireworks. Just a fire that never burns out.

If you want that too, write me back,

Marvin

He didn’t ask for anything. Not a photo.

Not a list of skills or stats or baggage.

He just… answered. Like we were already in the middle of something.

Like this was just the next part of a conversation we’d somehow always been having.

Like I was known. If someone had asked me what else I might have expected, I don’t know how I would have answered but it sure came as a shock. That did something to me.

My hands trembled as I read, not from cold but from the sudden, overwhelming hope of it.

This letter—this quiet, creased piece of paper—was proof that I wasn’t invisible.

That someone, somewhere, saw the flicker of my voice on a page and answered it without needing to fix me, or question what I could offer in return.

I held the letter to my chest like I could absorb some of it through my skin.

The weight of it was more than ink and words, it was want.

Not lust, not desperation. Just a simple, stunning kind of want that made you feel something deep inside, made you wonder.

And it wasn’t just his. It was mine too.

The part of me that still wished someone might choose me, not because I was convenient or broken in just the right way, but because they wanted to know me.

I sat there on the edge of the tub, in a coat I couldn’t afford to replace, in a bathroom that still smelled faintly of mildew no matter how many times I scrubbed it—and for the first time in years, I let myself believe that maybe something was beginning.

He had written me back. And that shouldn’t have felt like a miracle. But it did.

Marvin,

I don’t know what I expected when I sent that first letter. Probably nothing. Maybe that silence would fold over it and make it disappear, like everything else I’ve ever wanted. But you wrote back. And I haven’t stopped reading your letter.

I guess I should tell you about me. I make coffee for a living.

The kind that stains your clothes and doesn’t taste like anything until you’re desperate enough not to care.

I read too much and talk too little. I keep an old paperback in my coat pocket like a charm, and my best friend says I flinch every time someone looks at me too long.

I know you said about lonely, but do you ever get really lonely?

She’s not wrong. I’m not good at parties. I forget birthdays. I sleep better when it rains. I crave things that don’t fit into checkboxes, like silence that doesn’t feel like punishment and hands that don’t pull away too fast.

You asked me what made me write to you. The truth?

It wasn’t the ad. It was the way it felt like someone had finally stopped pretending.

Like someone had the courage to say it plain.

I want that. I want plain words that don’t hide knives in them.

I want real. I don’t know what I’m expecting from this, and I won’t lie and say I’m brave.

I’m not. But I am curious. And maybe I’m hoping, just a little, that you’re curious too.

Write me again?

Warmly,

Gennie

P.S. My favorite color is moss green. The dark kind, like forests right after it rains.

I stared at the envelope for a long time before I sealed it.

The ink had barely dried. My handwriting looked uncertain.

Like it didn’t want to take up space. I heard the door open behind me, soft creak, then the sound of Maddie’s boots on the warped floorboards.

She didn’t say anything at first. Just crossed the room, picked up the mug I hadn’t touched, and poured herself a sip like she’d been invited.

“You’ve been real quiet,” she said, sitting on the arm of the couch. “Which usually means one of three things: you’re either writing sad poetry again, you’re about to delete another app and buy a book instead, or you’re planning your escape.”

I lifted my eyes. “I’m not writing poetry.”

Her gaze dropped to the envelope in my hand. “What’s that?”

I swallowed. “A reply.”

Maddie took the envelope gently from me, like it might break. She read the name. Marvin.

“This the guy? Newspaper cowboy?”

I nodded.

“Are you sure?” she asked. But there was no judgment in it. Just… worry. The kind that builds up over time, after watching someone you love start over too many times without actually starting.

“No,” I said honestly. “But I sent the first letter. He wrote back. And I felt… seen.”

Maddie sat with that for a second. Then she passed the envelope back. “Well,” she said, “any man who makes you pull out real stationery and a pen probably deserves at least one more letter.”

I laughed, a breathy kind of laugh I wasn’t used to making. She didn’t smile, but I saw the warmth in her eyes. She was always doing that—looking at me like she was memorizing something she didn’t want to lose.

“You’re going to be okay,” Maddie said. “You just don’t know what kind of okay yet.”

I nodded, even though I didn’t believe it. Before I made it to the door, Maddie stopped me.

“Wait.” She dug into her coat pocket and pulled out a tiny silver keychain—a horseshoe, faded and scratched. “Take this.”

I blinked. “From your glove box shrine?”

“Don’t be dramatic. It’s a charm. You’re starting something, right? Might as well have a little luck with you.”

I turned it over in my hand. The edges were warm from her pocket, worn smooth from her thumb. It was stupid and sentimental and something she would never have given away without meaning it.

“Thanks,” I said quietly.

“If he turns out to be an axe murderer, I’m driving to South Dakota myself,” she added, tossing me a wink. “And I’m bringing a shovel.”

I snorted. “To bury him?”

“To bring you home.”

And that—that’s what undid me a little. Not the joke, but the truth inside it.

The way she said home like it still meant something.

Like I hadn’t already convinced myself I didn’t deserve one.

It hit deeper than I expected. All the things I never said—about how lonely the nights were, how small the walls felt, how sometimes I talked out loud just to fill the silence—she didn’t need me to say them.

She just knew . That was Maddie’s magic.

She never needed the full confession to show up with a shovel.

I didn’t say anything else. Couldn’t. My throat was thick with the kind of grief that didn’t belong to a death, but to a thousand small losses stacked inside me like bricks.

All the ways I’d stopped believing in good things.

In people . In being chosen for something soft and permanent.

I held the keychain like a lifeline. It was warm from her hand, and in mine it felt like more than just a trinket.

It felt like belief. Like she was giving me some piece of her courage, just enough to keep me from turning back.

I walked out the door with the letter tucked into my coat, heart fluttering uneven and nervous, like it didn’t know whether to be afraid or hopeful. Maybe both. Because maybe—just maybe—this wasn’t the end of something. But the start of something different for a change.