She considers what to say for a few minutes before writing, on a piece of hotel notepaper: In fact, I read it twice. And then she mails it off with the book.
He sends her another copy a week later, this one a close-up of a blue-eyed husky staring the reader down. His note says: And?
She finds her next one at the Strand, which she wanders into one day after having brunch with Jason and Olivia, which—in spite of the avocado toast—turned out to be more fun than expected. This one has a howling wolf on the jacket, snowflakes coming down all around him, and she dashes off a note on the back of a bookstore postcard: And you were right.
After that, he sends her a leather-bound edition with a message scrawled neatly inside the cover: Welcome to the Jack London fan club. She decides she needs to up her game and returns to a rare bookstore on the Upper East Side she once visited with Luke, who was trying to track down a signed Dylan album. It turns out they don’t have any copies of The Call of the Wild, but there’s a first edition of another book by Jack London called The Cruise of the Snark, which feels somehow appropriate. Inside, there’s an inscription the author wrote to a friend: “Just a few places of a voyage that proved so happy.”
She pays way too much for it and mails it off to him.
And then: there’s nothing. Not for a long time.
All through the fall, Greta is still hopeful each time she gets back into town and picks up her mail. But by December, it’s clear that whatever game this was, Ben is no longer playing. Maybe he’s got other things to worry about, more important things. Maybe he’s gone back to his family. Or maybe he’s simply moved on.
For Christmas, she goes home to Ohio. It’s their first one without her mom, but Helen is still everywhere: from the boxes of decorations they drag down from the attic to the carols that play on a loop. When it’s time to hang the ornaments, Greta and Asher laugh at the ones she saved: popsicle-stick picture frames with thick globs of glue and chains of dried noodles with chipping paint. Each one feels like a gift she’s giving them all over again.
On Christmas morning—much to Asher’s chagrin—Greta gives her nieces a drum set.
Her dad manages to one-up her.
He gets them all guitars.
It’s late at night when she arrives back in New York, the streets rain-slicked and mostly empty. She presses her face to the window of the cab as they come across the bridge, watching the mosaic of taillights, the dancing reds and yellows.
In the hallway outside her apartment, there’s a sloping pile of packages, holiday gifts from friends and family, agents and managers, and, of course, the still-apologetic label execs. As she pushes open the door, a few of them fall inside along with her, and she sees a small brown box with Ben’s address on it. She doesn’t even bother to take off her coat before opening it. Inside, there’s a book. But it’s not The Call of the Wild. It’s not even by Jack London.
It’s navy blue with tiny white whales all over it.
She traces a finger over the title: Moby-Dick.
Even as she unfolds the note that’s attached, Greta is thinking that she doesn’t need to, not really; she already knows what this means.
Still, her heart wobbles at the sight of Ben’s now-familiar handwriting.
Time to turn the page, it says, and she tucks it back inside the book with a smile.
A few days later, it begins to snow, so thick and fast it almost looks like a time-lapse, like the world outside has been sped up. Inside, everything is hushed and still. There’s only Greta at the window, a mug in hand. She’s been writing all day, and her fingers are streaked with ink.
Outside, the wind sends the snow whistling up the street in ribbons of white. Tomorrow, everything will be gray and slushy. But tonight, it’s perfect, and she stays there like that for a long time, mesmerized by the way the flakes hover like static. Her window faces north, and she pictures Central Park, fifty blocks away: the trees cloaked in white, the drifts piling up, the lampposts with their dreamlike glow. And somewhere in the middle of it all—perhaps—another silent figure, slow-moving and bundled and equally full of wonder.
Her boots are under a bench in the entryway. She walks over and stares at them, weighing something, before slipping her feet inside. Then she grabs her coat and scarf, and a pair of mittens too.
By the time she gets outside, it’s snowing even harder, and everything feels surreal and a little dizzying. For a moment, she just stands there, peering up at the twinkling streetlights and the velvety sky, her boots sunk deep in the snow.