He looked surprised to see her. “Hi, Mr. Harrison. You okay?”

He waved a hand, tucking the napkin into his pocket. “Fine. Just a little lung cancer is all.”

Her mouth dropped. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea you were sick.”

“Not sick. Dying. Finally,” he said with a grin.

“I’m so sorry to hear that…” Despite his casualness, her knees felt slightly wobbly as she gripped the edge of the counter. He was sick. He was dying.

“Sweet girl, when you get to be my age, it’s almost a relief to know your days are numbered. I’ve lived through wars, depressions, technology changes, and teenagers wearing their jeans around their knees. I was starting to think nothing could take me out.”

Sarah gave a small smile. At least he was in good spirits, and the man was in his nineties…and alone. In a sad way, she could appreciate his acceptance of the end of his days.

“You were in the military?” She knew he was, but she wasn’t ready to admit just how much she knew. Yet. Not in a rush to leave, and thinking he might like the company, she pulled up a stool at the counter and sat.

“Enlisted at eighteen. I’d always been fascinated by planes and bombers, so I went into the air force. I loved flying a jet. I flew my P-51 Mustang over Japanese airfields near Tokyo for ten months before I was captured, held as a prisoner of war in a Japanese war camp for eighteen months.”

“Oh my God—that’s horrible.”

“I learned a lot about the people we were fighting in that time. I learned the language and the culture, got to understand their world. Had me questioning a lot of things. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Made me realize there’s two sides to every story.”

She nodded. Two sides. She’d only read one. She was desperate to hear his, to know why he did what he did. Why he broke her grandmother’s heart. She refused to come to her own conclusions. Life and love were complicated. She understood that right now better than anyone.

“So what happened after you returned?” She cleared her throat. “Did you marry? Have a family?” He was all alone here now, but that didn’t mean he didn’t possibly have family somewhere.

His eyes smiled as he shook his head. “I’d only ever loved one woman, and she deserved everything I couldn’t give her. I was a different man when I came back. The things I saw, the things I did changed me. It took a long time to come to peace with my part in the war. I was better alone.”

Sarah’s throat tightened. “But if you loved her…”