Megan pulled into my driveway at four o’clock on Christmas Eve.
She came through the front door with an armful of dried hydrangeas from her own garden. And a pecan pie she’d made herself, in her grandmother’s blue pie plate.
She stopped in the front hall.
She looked across the room at the dining table. At the empty spaces where three place settings had been.
“They canceled,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
I handed her my phone. She read the text.
“Groceries,” she said.
“Apparently.”
She looked at the table. She looked at the kitchen counter. The coffee. The marmalade. She looked around the whole house. The way she’d looked at it a hundred times during those twenty months of building it. With the full attention of somebody who knew everything that went into it. And understood exactly what everything cost.
“They’re missing this,” she said.
“They’re missing dinner.”
She set my phone down on the counter. Hard.
“No, Miranda,” she said. “They’re missing you.”
She said it without softening it at all. That’s Megan. She says the true thing in the voice of the true thing, without wrapping it in anything easier.
“I know,” I said.
“Do you actually know?”
“Yes. I actually know.”
“Because you keep reaching,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Toward something that keeps not being there.”
“Yes.”
“So when does that stop?”
I picked up a dish towel. I didn’t need it. I just needed something in my hands.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t figured out how to stop reaching. And I’m not sure stopping is the goal.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“I think the reaching and the building come from the same place,” I said. “I think if I figure out how to stop reaching for them completely, I might stop building too. I might stop being the person who drew on the car window.”
Megan thought about that for a long moment.
“That’s either very wise,” she said, “or very convenient.”
“Probably some of both.”
She put the hydrangeas in a vase on the island. She set the pie on the counter.
“Okay,” she said. “Then we keep reaching. But we also have twenty people coming in two hours, and the potatoes aren’t going to peel themselves.”
So we cooked.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.