Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep - On the Street Where You Live - Chapter 7

Episode Date: August 15, 2026

Enjoy this excerpt into Kathryn’s new cozy audiobook, On the Street Where You Live. Order now ⁠here⁠. Copyright © 2026 by Kathryn Nicolai. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio read by Kathryn Nicolai, Javier Munoz, Mara Wilson, Alma Cuervo, Holter Graham, Danny Burstein, Natalie Naudus, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Patti Murin, from the audiobook On the Street Where You Live by Kathryn Nicolai, published by Simon & Schuster Audio, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.  Used with permission from Simon & Schuster, LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get more, nothing much happens with bonus episodes, extra long stories, and ad-free listening, all while supporting the show you love. Subscribe now. Hi, it's Catherine. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that you're about to hear something a little different. This isn't a sleep story. So if what you need tonight is help falling asleep, I'd suggest choosing one of our other episodes in the feed. and saving this one for another time. What you're about to hear is a chapter from my new, cozy audio novel, on the street where you live, which is out now and available wherever you listen to audiobooks. And I'm especially excited to share this chapter with you because it's read by Cabana Holdbrook-Smith,

who has been a favorite of mine for years, in movies and television on stage and in so many wonderful audiobooks. It was such an honor to have him be part of mine. I think you're going to feel very at home with his voice, hopefully in some of the same ways you've come to feel at home with mine. So now, here is On the Street Where You Live. Chapter 7. Sympathetic Restoration The novelist. The typewriter was heavy and its tight bars were coated in sticky dust.

There didn't seem to be a key for its lock and the carriage moved with some reluctance. When he experimentally pressed the C key, its striker rose and pressed into the dried-out ribbon, but didn't sit back down into place. On instinct, he opened the small drawer on the right side of the desk, hoping to find replacement ribbons. It was empty. Then he noticed an old writing pad and pen on the left side of the machine and realized that the person who had last typed here must have been left-handed. So he opened the drawer on the left side of the desk and found a half-empty box of the ribbons. He counted the spools and wondered how many pages could be typed with the ink still left on them. Was it enough to write a book? Enough to write the novel that had been. in waiting with growing impatience for him to finally put down to paper. He thought he could probably buy more ribbon at the hardware store.

He knew for a fact that some of the dusty boxes on the shelves in the back of the place had been there since he was a child. He chuckled, thinking that soon, archaeologists in Pith helmets, would descend on the place with brushes and tools to investigate their collection of light bulbs and engine parts that hadn't been touched in decades. He carefully lifted the typewriter from the desk and turned it this way and that. He'd been looking for a reason to sit down and write,

maybe even waiting for a sign to encourage him on his way. That was silly he knew. His mother used to say, Stop waiting to feel ready. And he thought of that when he caught himself retreating from things he wanted to do, how he wanted to live. He had a story to tell and whether it was on this old typewriter or in a spiral notebook with the stub of a pencil, he should tell it. Still, the typewriter was a beautiful thing. It would be a pleasure to lay his fingers on it each morning,

a cup of coffee at hand, and the possibility of a new day of writing ahead of him. He decided he would do it. He would buy the old machine, take it home and get it working again, and he would write the story he'd been sketching out in his imagination for years. He centred the carriage on its track and looked around the room for the cover he hoped could still be found. A lot of these old contraptions had domed shells made of stiff board that clipped into place at the back and locked at the front. Some even had tiny brass keys to secure them.

It took him a moment, but then he spotted it. Turned on one side on the top shelf of the bookcase by the window, its edges was scuffed and at some point it had been repaired sloppily with electrical tape. He shook his head, knowing this project was going to take a bit of time. He carefully fitted the cover of the cover of, over the machine. It did indeed have a small keyhole at the front, but after another few minutes of looking, he decided the key had been lost. He had a collection of keys for small locks like these

in his workshop, and hoped he'd find one that fitted. He carried it out to the table in the driveway where he paid a whole ten dollars for it. The woman who took his money asked him if he intended to use the typewriter, or if he was just a collector. His smile was pinched, and he almost kept his plans to himself, but thought, why not? Why not say what he intended to do? There was some magic, some power in saying it aloud, and not saying it even to a stranger seemed like an admission that he might already be backing away from the work ahead.

So, as she cleared out a box for him to tuck the machine into, he said out loud for the first time, I want to write a book. And then, thinking that he needed to be a little clearer with his intention, I'm going to write a book. She stopped with bunches of crinkled up packing paper in her hands and used the back of one wrist to push her glasses up on her nose. That's exciting. she said, with a lift in her voice. Do you know what you'll write about? He smiled at her enthusiasm and helped her as she eased the tightwriter into the box and tucked the paper around the edges. I think I do most of it anyway. She sat back down on her chair and shaded her eyes with her hand, looking up at him.

I've always wondered how writers start. Is it all there in your head before you write the first page or do you find it as you go? He hoisted the box into his arms and said, Once I figure it out, I'll let you know. He heard her laughing as he walked down the driveway to his car. He opened the hatchback and settled the box in. He took it back out and put it on the back seat. That seemed a little safer. He even buckled the box into place with the seatbelt. Finally he was ready to take the old typewriter home. He was eager to get it onto the workbench in his shop and start the process of bringing it back to life.

His house was a pale, yellow cape cod, a symmetrical house with a window on either side of the front door and the same pattern on the second floor. There was a penny face up stuck in the concrete of the sidewalk by the edge of the driveway to show when it was poured some 80 years before, and under the oak tree in the side yard, there was a flattened bit of root that looked exactly like a footprint.

He'd been stepping onto it, lining it up with his own foot since he was 12 years old. For years, he'd lived far away, had a busy life in a big city. Then Dad had started to struggle. On their Sunday phone calls, he sounded low. only and like the spring had gone out of his step. So the novelist started coming home for more visits more frequently, and each time he did, he noticed that the slower pace of his hometown

felt good, like a cool washcloth over tired eyes. He ran into old friends at the grocery store, met them for coffee at the bakery, took Dad out to watch a few baseball games at the high school, and soon he started to think of this place, not the city, as home. So he stopped waiting for some perfect moment, stopped waiting to feel ready and retired. He ordered a new bed for his room at Dad's, that ancient twin just wasn't going to cut it, and moved home.

The first year or so he'd been pretty busy. His dad had always been handy, and he could still get around pretty well, but his eyes didn't pick up the leak in the hall closet or the rotted boards in the back porch. Once a round of repairs was done, he spent a few weeks cleaning out the workshop in the garage. The first time he stepped into it, a day or two after the move home, he'd been a bit shocked to see the order he'd always remembered there, lost to a chaos of strewn nails and heaped tools. Dad's fastidiousness for organisation had apparently run out over the years.

The novelist rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Now it was a neat, comfortable space, just the sort for working on a beautiful but neglected object like he had in the back seat. He got out of the car and pushed up the garage doors, He'd replaced the old doors with ones full of windows So that the sunlight could find its way in on cold days But today, with the bright blue sky and warm air He preferred to open it all up and work in the breeze

There was a smell to the garage that he loved In the summer it was especially strong And it hit him as he carried the box to his bench He could smell the pungent wood shavings the oil on his tools, a kind of warm, dusty scent that was exactly the same in every other garage workshop he'd ever been in. He didn't think he would be able to get rid of the scent if he wanted to, and he didn't want to. He lifted the typewriter out of its box and took off the cover. He'd deal with the missing key later. His first piece of business was to get it typing

again. He went through his drawers and toolboxes and pulled together some of the things he thought he would need. Screwdrivers, steel wool, a small wire brush, and a handful of tooth brushes. He took out his dremel tool and some dish soap and found a few small cups to hold the various pieces that would be removed as he took the machine apart. He learned the hard way over the years to be careful when he disassembled something. Sometimes he took pictures and made notes along the way so that he wouldn't get to the end of the project and not be able to put it all back together. He cleared off a section of his bench and stretched out and anchored down a piece of butcher's paper over the surface. As he took things apart, he knew to stage them, so the first screws

that came out would be the last to go back in. He started with a little cleaning. As he wiped down the keys and side panels, flakes of paint, and years of dust started to come away. Next, he hunted down and took out every screw he could find, and there were a lot. This little machine was built to last for a very long time, and he wondered if the engineers who designed,

mind it, ever considered that the hardware would last longer than the technology. If they could imagine the typewriter being obsolete before it broke down, well, he thought, it wasn't obsolete. It was inspiring him today, so even if he couldn't get the keys unstuck, it was still helping a writer to write, which was exactly its purpose. He dropped the screws into the cups as they came out. setting them alongside their components on the paper. There didn't seem to be any problems with the mechanism.

No parts were broken or bent, which told him that there was nothing more than neglect and disuse at play. After he'd taken apart as much as he could, he began to clean the typebars with the wire brush, testing them by pressing the keys until they all moved up and down as they should. He oiled them for good. measure, and did the same for the carriage which soon slid easily back and forth.

It was immensely satisfying to push the lever on the carriage return and hear the bell ring. It was the last time it rang, he wondered. Who had been typing then? What had they been writing a story, a novel, a strongly worded letter to the editor? A last will and testament. He stood up, a polishing cloth in his hand, and stared through the open garage doors into the distance. His imagination ran like a river. Minutes passed, and then he shook his head and came back to himself.

He'd always been a bit of a daydreamer. But now he felt like he was leaning on a release valve of creativity. He saw a story in his mind. and at the centre of it was this machine. That hadn't been the story he'd intended to write. It wasn't the one he'd been thinking about for years, and he didn't know what that meant for him. Would he go from writing no books to writing two?

Should he set aside the story he'd carried around for so long and indulge in this new idea? Or exercise some discipline? and stay the course. Did the muse understand discipline? He jocled to himself. There were no rules here. He would just need to start, start somewhere, and see where it led.

He used the toothbrushes to clear away the loose chips of paint on the panels and considered for a while if he should attempt to repaint the machine. A term came to mind that he'd have to mind that he'd heard before, sympathetic restoration. It meant repairing, mechanical and structural components without erasing history. So, a piece could still be used, but the scars and Nixit had acquired over its life were not buffed away, but rather proudly preserved. This typewriter deserved a sympathetic restoration. He walked to the shelves at the back of the workshop and stood with his hands on his hips for a minute, considering what he needed. Finally, he reached for a tin can of linseed oil.

He carried it back to the bench and poured a small amount of it into one of the empty cups. It was a dark amber colour and had a pungent smell. Linsed oil and flax oil came from the same plant, but they were processed differently. Linseed oil came from a heated extraction while flaxseed oil was produced by cold pressing. He dipped a small brush into the liquid and began to seal the exposed metal with it. This would keep away rust and protect where the paint had worn off. As he worked, he thought about the ingenuity of makers and menders through the centuries. He always marveled at the techniques and tools they'd developed, the solutions they'd come up with,

and how many of them were still in use because they were still the best around. He'd worked on a bronze sculpture once that had lost a leg. To put it back together, he'd used a method known as a Roman joint. It worked by threading a pin through holes in the two pieces, and the holes had to be just slightly out of line with one another, so the pin would cinch them together as it was hammered into place. The method had been used for thousands of years and would continue to be valued as a strong and reliable repair.

He imagined that it must have been very challenging to work out the shape of the pin, the degrees of difference between one hole and the other, at a time when even sketching things out, would have been challenging. Now things could be measured so precisely, could be seen in 3D on a computer, tests could be run before anything was even tried. He wondered if he'd lived a thousand years ago or more what lost skills he would have learned. Would he have been a sculptor or a blacksmith or an engineer? Would he have helped to build some great structure who's

ruins were now written about in books? Or would he have been a farrier in a small town who scribbled poetry in his spare time? Well, one thing he knew for sure, he wouldn't have gotten to work on a piece like the one he had on his bench now. Next, he began to polish the keys, cleaning away decades of dust and dirt. This took a bit of time. He worked his way around, each circular key, sometimes using a toothpick to free the dirt where it was caked near the metal casing. There were fewer keys than on a modern keyboard, and he wondered just when numbers and symbols had been added. He looked at the rows of letters and remembered reading once that they were laid out in this order, mostly to break up pairs of letters that frequently appeared together, as typing them, often led early-tytytying.

typewriters to jam. He thought that no matter what, he'd need to be careful as he typed. Once the keys were clean, he fished through the box of ribbons he'd found and threaded one into the ribbon carrier, a small silver clip that held the inked material in place so that when the strikers rose, they would stamp through it and onto the ribbon leaving a printed mark on the paper. This machine had a little switch for ribbon direction so that when you got to the end of it, you could adjust the height, reverse the direction, and type your way back through the same ribbon. He set it aside to turn his efforts toward the domed lid which was fraying at the corners. He tusked again at the strips of electrical tape as he carefully peeled them off.

There wasn't much adhesive left on them, so they mostly mostly. fell away, but in a few spots, the blackboard underneath was stripped off with them. He used small scraps of thin wood veneer to reinforce those spots, glued in from the back and held in place with tiny clips while they dried. He decided to keep this part of the restoration sympathetic as well, and didn't touch up the chipped paint. He cleaned the surface with a soft cloth and re-glued the seams where the edges were pulling apart. While the glue dried, he went back to the shelves, this time looking for a pint-sized jam jar full of old keys.

Whenever he saw any at an antique store or garage sale, he always bought them up. The old locks were built around only a few templates, so it was usually pretty easy to find a key that worked. He shook the jar out onto the paper, beside the cover and started by trying keys that matched the material of the lock, since that was often a sign they could work together. Brass with brass, steel with steel and so on.

This little lock was some kind of polished metal, not actually silver but silver in colour. One by one, he tried his keys, fitting them in and attempting to turn them. The keys that didn't work, began to pile up on the other side of the workspace. Finally, he pulled a thin, round barrel key with tiny squared-off teeth from the pile. It looked like the kind that came with a diary and was destined to be lost almost instantly. It slipped right into the keyhole as if it had been made for it,

and turned the lock easily. Success! He carried the key over to his pegboard, where he hung it from a spare hook so as to not lose it himself before the project was finished. He stood and pressed his hands into his lower back, rolling his shoulders and leaning backward. He'd gotten stiff as he was working. He had a way of getting lost in projects like these, and several hours would pass without him noticing that he'd been hunched over and hadn't eaten or drunk. He looked through the open doors, and still, stretching his back and neck, started to amble out and down the drive. He could use a break. Had Dad gotten the mail yet?

There was a breeze blowing, and he looked at the thousands of leaves in the trees above him. They were twisting on their stems, flipped in the wind. There was a chill in the air, and when he got to the end of his driveway and looked down the street toward town, he saw a low, dark cloud spreading across the sky like spilled paint, or more like spilled ink. He looked at his own hands dirty from his work. A storm was coming. He guessed that in ten minutes or so the rain would be bucketing down. There were already streaks of it descending in the distance.

He pulled at the door of his mailbox. The hinge was sticky and rusted. He would try to remember to oil it in the morning. The answers of the question, has Dad gotten the mail, was apparently yes. At first glance the box looked empty, but then he noticed a lone sheet of paper that was resting nearly invisibly against one side and along the bottom inside the box. He slid it out and smudged the orange paper with his inky fingers.

It was a flyer reminding him that the neighbourhood block party was the next day. The street would be closed to traffic from the library down, and there would be games and music and a potluck. The party always took place the last weekend of the summer, and he'd been going for years. but without this flyer he would surely have forgotten, maybe even been absorbed in another project and not looked up till the last game was finished.

He folded the sheet and tucked it in his back pocket, wrenched the door closed on his mailbox, and trotted back up the driveway. The rain was moments away now. He could feel it. He carefully picked up the typewriter, closed the garage and sprinted to do it. toward the kitchen door. He was inside for just seconds before he heard the sudden crash of rain

hitting the house. He left the typewriter on the kitchen table and rushed from room to room, closing windows and writing a lamp that had blown over. He noticed Dad snoozing in his chair in the den, and he chuckled, thinking that the house could blow down and he'd probably keep right on sleeping. With the house closed up, the noise from the storm was muted and the rooms dark. He switched on lamps in the kitchen and front room and stood at the bay window, looking out at the street for a few minutes. The lights were on in the old Victorian across the street, and he looked up into the second and third floor windows.

There was a shadow at one, and he wondered if it was the old black cat that lived there. Rain ran like a stream down the sidewalks, and he imagined that the path down to the park would be marshy and muddy for a few days to come. He shivered. The warm, sunny day had evaporated so quickly that his arms were covered in goose bumps. There was a sweater draped over the back of an armchair, and he put it on. Once the chill had subsided, his stomach grumbled, and he thought, back to his last meal, which had been only some oatmeal and a piece of toast for breakfast.

In the fridge he found half a lasagna he'd made a day or two before. He turned on the oven and pushed it in. He also took a cucumber from the basket on the counter and sliced it into thin rounds. He spread them out on a plate, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, and ate them standing by the sink. In the door of the fridge he found a jar of olives, and in the pantry a box of crackers, and he ate a lot of them as well. He thought he might ruin his appetite, but even after his snacks and a tall glass of water, he still had plenty of room for lasagna. While he waited for it to warm, he carried the typewriter over to the library table by the bay window. It was his favourite spot for jigsaw puzzles.

as it had plenty of natural light, and he'd done many of them last winter, with a fire lit in the grate behind him. He cleared off a space and set down the machine. It was transformed from the dusty, jammed bit of machinery he'd found that morning. The keys were shiny and clean, the carriage just waiting for a fresh sheet of paper. Paper. That was the next thing. He went looking for some. There must be some, the kind that wasn't lined or in a journal. In a closet, there was a very old box of the type of paper that could be fed into a dot matrix printer, with perforations along the edges that could be ripped away and a carbon sheet attached so that you got two copies in one. He put his hands on his hips. looked at the box and tried to remember when that would have been used for the last time.

Thirty years ago? Maybe more. Well, the next project on his list should probably be a bit of cleaning. He put the lid back on the box, pushed it into the closet for another day, and kept looking. Finally, in the cupboard over the fridge, he found a packet of simple white paper, and carried it back to the table in the front room. He pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat. It was something he hadn't done for decades. Load a sheet of paper into a typewriter,

but the muscles in his fingers remembered. Unlike with a printer or a copier, you had to feed in the paper one sheet at a time, so he found the slot behind the carriage and dropped a sheet in. then started to turn the knob to roll it up into position in front of the strikers. The first time it came out a little crooked, and he reached for the sheet with both hands and pulled it all the way through the rollers and out.

He remembered seeing that in a movie when he was young, a reporter in a busy bullpen full of fast-talking journalists and ringing typewriters and cigarette smoke. He laughed at the memory and run. put the paper in again, a little more carefully this time, and turned the knob. On the second try, it lined up just right, and he sat back in his chair to look at the blank page. He propped an elbow on the armrest and dropped his chin in his hand. Well, here he was. It was all done but the writing.

The novelist tapped his forefinger against his lips and thought. Should he write an outline? He'd taken a class in college many years ago, and he remembered the professor encouraging this, writing an outline of the chapters, creating backstories for the characters, answering questions about them to get to know how they would act and react to the world of the story. But now that he was finally sitting here, he just wanted to start, even if it would be a full start and tomorrow would find him scrapping tonight's pages. He laid his fingers on the keys and paused again. Should he write the title page first? He thought he knew what it would be called, but he'd also thought that he knew what story he'd be writing, right up until he found this old

machine. So instead, he just typed Chapter 1 at the top of the page. and pushed the carriage across to drop to the next line. This story, which had loosely formed itself in his mind at the estate sale, was about a man with a secret, a man who lived a long time ago and had written the secret down on an old typewriter. It went undiscovered for decades, a mystery unsolved, though many had tried, until someone else sat at the machine and found themselves typing out the secret.

In the meantime, it had travelled from one coast to the other, and the people who remembered the mystery had mostly passed on. Now forgotten things would be remembered, wrongs righted, and by the end of the story all would be revealed. At least he certainly hoped that it would. It felt tenuous in his mind, and he worried that if he looked too closely at any part of it, It would dissolve like a dream a minute after waking.

So, he tried not to get ahead of himself. The novelist remembered that bit of advice given to Alice after she fell down the rabbit hole. To start at the beginning, go on until she reached the end, then stop. He kept typing, sometimes going back to X out whole lines and rewrite them. He knew that using this typing, writer would make the whole process trickier than it would be if he used a computer. The story seemed to demand it, and he was determined. When he had a stack of a dozen pages or so, flipped face

down on the table beside him, he realized that the house was filled with the scent of basil and garlic and tomatoes. He'd forgotten his dinner in the oven. Luckily, Dad must have woken up and taken it out. A large piece was missing and a dirty dish was in the sink. He'd wrapped the foil back over it, though, so it was still warm, and there was a plate and silverware set out for the novelist. He cut himself a large slice of the lasagna and refilled his water glass, then sat right back down at his desk. In between bites, he continued to type. The first chapter flowing into the second, Sometimes he stopped and just thought, made notes on a pad he'd pulled from the junk drawer. Toward the end of the second chapter, when he was on his second piece of lasagna,

he found that something he hadn't realised he had been setting up in the pages before was about to happen. And it was better than his imagination. It took the story in a more intriguing direction, with more layers and details than he'd seen coming. He stood up and pushed the chair back and paced the room. It was a strange feeling. Like he'd laid electrical wiring for a room he didn't know would be there, and now he was about to screw in a bulb and watch it light up. He realized that later in the process,

he would likely have plenty of opposite moments, moments in which he needed to plug something in but wouldn't find an outlet. and would have to trace the line back through the chapters and patiently lay the wire into place. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock. It was late, later than he thought. But he knew he wouldn't rest until this new twist had been set down, so he pulled his chair back up

and laid his fingers back on the keys. An hour later, with the third chapter begun and more note, on his pad, he pushed away from the typewriter. He shuffled the pages he typed into a neat stack and set them face up to look at tomorrow. His dishes went into the sink, and before turning to the stairs, he opened the back door and looked out at the rain-soaked yard. The air was cool, and he could smell the first hint of autumn. He wondered how long this first draft would take him. Would he ever again be able to write with the pace he had tonight? This wasn't like repairing something on his workbench.

He never worried that if a few weeks passed between projects he wouldn't be able to fix a broken lamp or wobbly table leg again, but he admitted to himself that he was concerned that the fever of inspiration he'd felt tonight might break and that he simply might never be able to find his way back into this kind of writing. The trees were dripping in the backyard, and the cloud cover was so thick that he couldn't see the moon, though, of course it was there.

He'd once heard someone, he thought it had been a musician, say that you had to make art over and over again for it to feel like a skill set and not an accident. that you had to sit down and create day after day for quite a while, but that if you did that, eventually you would trust that when you called for it, it would come. He'd been at it for only one day, so he guessed he had no right to expect the muse to be at his beck and call. He'd have to just sit down again tomorrow, put his fingers on the keys, and try. The yard was still.

Squirrels and chipmunks must be tucked into their nests for the night, and he should be too. He pulled the door closed and turned the bolt. Suddenly he was very tired. He shuffled up the stairs and paused at Dad's door to listen. Once he heard snoring, he went to his own room and fished a pair of pyjamas from his drawer. As he lay down and drew the blanket up over his shawl. shoulder. He thought about the secret hidden in the keys of the typewriter, the story his father's

old tools held, the tree root in the shape of his footprint, and all of it wove into the next chapter in his mind.