The Stories We Tell Read Online Free PDF Page B

the table and sits across from me.
    I take in a deep breath. “Cooper and Willa were in a car accident. Cooper’s face is all … cut up. Willa has a concussion, or brain swelling.” I state only the most important facts.
    â€œHow? What?” Francie asks on exhaled breath.
    I repeat Cooper’s story as best I can—Willa’s drunken wobbling, the rain, the wheel being grabbed, and then the tree, the obdurate, unmoving tree.
    â€œNo.” Francie shakes her head. “No.”
    â€œIt’s awful,” I say, and then the tears come—the ones I’ve suppressed for hours, the ones that I didn’t want Cooper or Gwen to see. I drop my face into my hands.
    Francie comes to me and places her hand on the back of my neck, a warm, calm presence. “Go home, Eve. Get some sleep. We got it here.…”
    I look up and wipe at the tears, betrayers of emotion. “Cooper is sleeping with the help of pain pills,” I say. “Gwen is home, too. Willa is sedated and they’re calling me when she wakes up. This is where I want to be and this is what I want to be doing.”
    â€œCan I go see her?” Francie asks.
    â€œOf course. She’s at Savannah Memorial.”
    Francie grabs her purse and glances up at the chalkboard. “I have an afternoon appointment with a wedding photographer. I’ll be back by then.” And she’s gone.
    Max sits next to me. “That’s a crazy story. I’m so sorry.”
    The story. Max always wants “the story,” always wants to know “What happens next?” Max Winder, our writer and graphic designer, who would be our CFO if we had a CFO, runs the business, does the PR and marketing, pays the bills, and maintains our letterpress machines in top shape. There is no real title for someone who is everything. He’s single, forty years old, and as intrigued with vintage fonts and their stories as I am. And I love him. I hope I love him the way I love Francie, the way I love antique fonts or the Vandercook, which I fell for some twenty years before. I’ve mostly convinced myself this is true. (It’s the not mostly that’s causing some problems.) His smile reaches all the way up to and then across his eyes to his ears.
    I think this, too, will pass.
    That was my mom’s second-favorite quote from a Bible verse from only (of course only) the King James Version.
    Yes, this feeling for Max will pass. Everything does. Everything will.
    I look to Max then. “I can’t seem to work it all out in my head yet,” I say. “But it’s what happened.”
    Max reaches for my hand and squeezes it before rising to go to his own stall, his own desk. Now the Civil Wars sing “If I Didn’t Know Better.” The large overhead fan whirs on high with a pleasant whisper. We sit at our individual desks. Each work space, each stall, is as different as our personalities. My space holds a desk cut from an oak that fell in the back field. Pictures of my family hang on the plank cedar walls next to posters showcasing our designs. I keep a large burlap bulletin board, where inspirational quotes, photos, and random ideas are pinned above my desk.
    Francie’s work spot contains an old teacher’s desk, which she salvaged from a torn-down elementary school. Sheet music and poems are tacked in crooked patterns on her walls. A guitar case is propped in the corner on a circular flowered rug.
    Max’s place is dominated with an ancient bar, scarred and still covered in shellac, which he’d found in an alleyway downtown. Next to this desk, he keeps an wooden storage unit, where he meticulously files his personal assortment of type fonts. His CD collection fills an entire metal bookshelf, so his books—so many books—are piled on the floor.
    An hour later, the day turns brutally hot, one of those blistering afternoons when people visit the Low Country and say, “God, how