My sister told her boyfriend that she loved to read, which was a lie. We were sitting in a crowded pub in Manchester when she first said it, her voice light and airy as she tried to impress Callum. I watched her from across the table, nearly choking on my cider because I knew for a fact that the only thing she had read in the last three years was a takeaway menu. She was always the social butterfly, the one who preferred loud music and crowded dance floors over a quiet corner with a paperback.
Callum, on the other hand, was the kind of guy who always had a worn-out Penguin Classic sticking out of his coat pocket. He looked at my sister, Maya, like she had just revealed she spoke a secret, magical language. He started asking her about her favorite authors, and I watched her stumble through a vague description of “classic stuff” and “anything with a good plot.” I wanted to call her out right then and there, but the way she was beaming at him made me keep my mouth shut.
At their next date, he gifted her a book. It was a beautiful, cloth-bound edition of a novel I’d never heard of, something about a journey across the sea. He told her it was his favorite book in the world and that he couldn’t wait to hear what she thought about the ending. Maya thanked him with a huge grin, tucked it into her bag, and brought it home where it sat on her bedside table for exactly two weeks.
Of course, it ended up gathering dust on a shelf. She moved it from her nightstand to the top of her bookshelf, wedging it between an old trophy and a stack of fashion magazines. Every time Callum asked how she was enjoying it, she’d give him a distracted answer about how “the pacing was interesting” or how she was “taking it slow to savor the prose.” I could see the guilt eating at her, but she was too deep into the lie to admit she hadn’t even cracked the spine.
When I learned about it—specifically when I saw a literal cobweb forming between the book and the shelf—I shamed her into at least flipping through it. “Maya, the guy is head over heels for you, and he gave you his favorite thing,” I told her while we were hanging out in her flat. “At least read the first chapter so you don’t sound like a total fraud the next time you see him.” She groaned and rolled her eyes, but she finally reached up and grabbed the book, blowing a cloud of dust off the cover.
She opens it, and there, taped to the very first page, was a photograph that made her entire face go white. It wasn’t a bookmark or a receipt from the bookstore. It was a photo of our father, taken about thirty years ago, standing outside a small library in a village we used to visit as kids. My dad had passed away when we were young, and photos of him were rare, especially ones we hadn’t seen a thousand times in our family albums.
Maya sat down on the edge of her bed, her hands trembling as she stared at the image. “How did he get this?” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the city outside. I leaned over her shoulder, my heart hammering against my ribs. On the back of the photo, in Dad’s familiar, loopy handwriting, were the words: To my little bookworm, may you always find your way home through the pages.
I felt a lump form in my throat that I couldn’t swallow. We both realized in that moment that Callum hadn’t just bought a random book at a shop. He had been spending his weekends visiting the old bookstalls and village shops in the area where we grew up, searching for something special. He had actually found our dad’s old copy of this book—the one Dad used to read to Maya when she was so small she could barely hold her head up.
But Maya hadn’t actually lied about loving to read; she had just forgotten that she used to. Before Dad died, she was the one who always had a book in her hand, the little girl who would hide under the covers with a flashlight. After he passed, the pain of reading the stories they shared was too much, and she had buried that part of herself so deep that she didn’t even recognize it anymore. She had told Callum she loved to read as a reflex, a ghost of a memory she couldn’t quite place.
But the surprises weren’t over yet. As Maya flipped through the rest of the book, she found small notes in the margins, written in two different colors of ink. One was Dad’s blue ballpoint, making notes about the characters. The other was a black fine-liner. Callum had spent the last month reading the book alongside Dad’s old notes, adding his own thoughts as if he were having a conversation with a man he’d never met.
“He knew,” I said, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. “He knew you weren’t reading it, Maya. He didn’t give this to you to test you; he gave it to you so you could have a piece of yourself back.” Callum had seen the way her eyes lit up whenever they passed a library, and he had put the pieces together from the stories she’d told him about her childhood. He was waiting for her to be ready to open the cover on her own.
Maya didn’t go to her date that night; she stayed in and read the entire book from start to finish. She cried, she laughed, and she ran her fingers over the ink that her father had pressed onto the paper decades ago. I sat with her for a while, just listening to the sound of pages turning, a sound that had been missing from our lives for far too long. It was the most honest I had seen my sister in years, stripped of the “cool girl” persona she had built to protect herself.
The rewarding conclusion happened the next day when Callum showed up at her door. Maya didn’t try to fake a review or talk about the pacing. She just held the book out to him, her eyes red-rimmed but clear, and told him the truth. She told him why she stopped reading, why she lied, and how much it meant to see her father’s handwriting again. Callum didn’t say “I told you so”; he just took her hand and told her he was glad she was back.
It turns out that Callum had found the book at a charity shop three towns over. He had seen the name “Maya” written on the inside back cover in a child’s scrawl and had spent weeks verifying if it was actually hers. He had gone to incredible lengths not to impress her, but to heal a part of her he could see was hurting. It was the most selfless thing I had ever witnessed, a quiet act of devotion that required no audience.
I learned that we often lie to the people we love because we’re afraid our real selves aren’t enough. We think we have to be “interesting” or “intellectual” or whatever version of “perfect” we’ve created in our heads. But real love isn’t about the version of you that reads the right books; it’s about the person who sees the story you’re already writing, even when you’ve lost the plot.
Maya started reading again, for real this time. She and Callum have a little book club for two, and our house is slowly filling up with novels and poetry. The dust on the shelf is gone, replaced by the clutter of a life being lived out loud. My sister is still a social butterfly, but now she’s a social butterfly who knows the value of a quiet moment and a good story.
Family isn’t just about the people who are with us; it’s about the memories they leave behind and the people who help us find them. Dad’s book wasn’t just a gift from a boyfriend; it was a bridge back to a father who loved us and a reminder that we are never truly lost as long as we have someone willing to help us look. I’m just glad I shamed her into opening that first page.
If this story reminded you that honesty is the best foundation for any relationship, please share and like this post. We all have parts of ourselves we’ve buried to keep the pain away, and sometimes all it takes is the right person and the right book to bring them back to life. I’d love to hear about a time someone helped you find a piece of yourself you thought was gone forever. Would you like me to help you find a special way to show someone you truly see them for who they are?
