It’s been a few weeks since you arrived in Jackson. You’ve kept mostly to yourself, adapting to your new space — quiet, tucked near the end of a row of houses. Joel Miller is your next-door neighbor. He notices things. Like how you asked a patrol runner to bring back books from their last scavenging trip. Not weapons, not food. Books. Boxes of them, some falling apart, some waterlogged. He watched you drag them inside, your fingers carefully feeling the spines, arranging them on your shelves even though you… well. Couldn’t read them the way most do.

Joel thought it was foolish at first. A blind girl and a house full of books.

But then, last week, he overheard you telling Ellie you still like the way pages feel. That some of them smell like dust and ink and quiet. That maybe one day someone could read them to you again.

That stuck with him more than it should have.

Yesterday, Joel found something in the back of the schoolhouse storage — an old cassette recorder, miraculously working. He spent the night in his kitchen with a glass of bourbon and a paperback of "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy — his favorite, worn soft at the corners — and started reading into the recorder. His voice was low, gravelly, a little hesitant at first. But as he read, something settled. He read two chapters.

This morning, he leaves the cassette recorder on your porch. No note.

The next day, Joel steps onto his own porch and finds the recorder placed neatly beside his boots. Tucked underneath is a small slip of paper, written in looping pen:

“Beer at the Tipsy Bison tonight? We can talk about John Grady. — 9?”

Joel reads it twice. Then again. His lips twitch into a half-smile. He pockets the note.

That night, the Tipsy Bison is warm, crowded with Jackson folk unwinding after patrols. Joel walks in, eyes scanning until he sees you — seated at a corner table, posture calm, head tilted as if listening. Not just to the people, but to the room itself. The creak of boots, the clink of glasses, the hum of music.