“Oh, good. And you can, I hope?” John was a local widower, and a retiree, who had asked to volunteer at Bill’s store. Bill had taken him on just for a few hours a day, but John had made himself indispensable, both as an employee and as a late-in-life friend.

“I can help for the summer. You want to keep the store open, then?”

“I don’t know about that, but I do know I can’t just shut it down right away. We’ve got special orders to fill, and cataloguing. Even if we decide to close it, it’s still a lot of work.”

“No, I know. What about the store in New York?”

Harry had actually been surprised that Ron Krakowski, who had bought out his father’s share in the original Ackerson’s Rare Books in Manhattan, had not come to the service. Ron had been Bill’s closest friend for many years, a true savant with an encyclopedic knowledge of the rare-book trade. Harry did remember hearing from his father once that Ron had become one of those city dwellers terrified to step off the asphalt island of Manhattan. That was probably the reason he hadn’t made it to Maine.

“What about the store in New York?” John asked, confusion in his voice.

“I thought maybe they’d buy up your stock, if you decided to close shop.”

“Oh, right. I hadn’t thought of that, but they probably would. When can you come in?”

Harry told John that he’d come and help out in the store on Tuesday. The thought of going in the following day was just too much to stomach. John looked visibly relieved that help was on the way.

His beer gone, Harry checked in briefly with Aunt Anne’s kids; all three were milling around the food, demolishing a bowl of Ruffles and some French onion dip. It was clear that he remembered them better than they remembered him, or maybe they were all at that stage of teenage boy in which conversation and facial expressions disappear. Aunt Anne came over and helped out, repeating to Harry several times that he could come visit whenever he wanted to and for however long. While talking with his aunt, he kept an eye on Alice, who was sitting on one of the T-back chairs, a plate of untouched pasta salad on her lap. Carl Ridley stood next to her, a hand on the back of her chair, while a familiar woman—was she a librarian?—bent at the waist to offer Alice her condolences.

“You should get back to Mather,” Harry told Paul, who had just extricated himself from what looked like a stilted one-on-one with Billy Herrick, Chrissie’s husband and one of those men who had married a talkative woman so that he, himself, could retire from the act of small talk.

“You sure?” Paul said.

“Yes, please. I wish I could come with you.”