Philip stopped just inside, the bell overhead trilling as the scents of cedar and stain—and hmm, vanilla?—enveloped him. Good grief, the place was crammed full. Not with people but with things. Just tons and tons of things. More chairs. Accent tables. Vintage lamps. So many knickknacks his eyes didn’t know where to land.

And color—it was like a rainbow had fallen from the sky and melted all over everything in the room. Wasn’t just an antique store, it seemed, but some sort of restoration shop where old stuff was given new life. Furniture reupholstered or stripped and stained or repainted. He’d watched enough HGTV in the hospital with Mom to know that was shiplap on the walls. Not original, certainly, because a building this old would have plaster walls and—

His thoughts cut off as the sound of voices drifted from a back room. First, a man, his words too mumbled and low to make out, and then . . .

“You can’t possibly be serious, Ben. You just . . . you can’t. I don’t understand it.”

How could a tone sound so lilting and melodic even as it sagged with distress? Was that Proprietor Indi Muir speaking? He angled around a waist-high bookcase, the male’s muffled response lost to him. As it should be because he hadn’t come in here to eavesdrop.

But what had he come in here to do? Find the owner and—what? Interrogate her about her last name? I know this is a total longshot, Ms. Muir, but I’m just wondering if you might have a relative named Maggie Muir. Apparently my grandfather knew someone by that name and I have all these questions.

Right. As if he’d managed even once in his entire thirty-two years to get out a single intelligent word to a pretty woman.

Not that he knew what Indi Muir looked like. The voice sounded pretty, that was all. But he didn’t even know if it belonged to Indi Muir. Could belong to anyone and he . . .

Well, he’d apparently finally gone off the deep end. Because here he was awkwardly standing around thinking about how he couldn’t talk to women when he was supposed to be at the college. And after that, he was destined for a stuffy dinner party with a bunch of faculty members who still saw him as a kid. Never mind his ten years of teaching and writing or his spot at the head of the table at every history department meeting.

Grandpa’s spot.

Grandpa? Where had that come from?

Grandpa had stopped being Grandpa the day of Dad’s funeral when he’d presented Philip with his first tie and told him to sit up straight in church. By the time they’d gone down to the basement of St. Mary’s for tasteless sandwiches and potato salad after the service, the older man had morphed into Grandfather and he’d been Grandfather ever since.

Shouldn’t be here. Really shouldn’t be here.

And yet, his feet carried him closer to the back of the shop, where a green and white flowered curtain covered a doorway he assumed must lead into a stockroom or breakroom or whatever sort of room a store like this had need of.