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.

“Just hear me out, Indi. I’m not trying to hurt you.”

Ah, so it was Indi Muir talking to the man. Ben, she’d called him, hadn’t she?

“If that’s the case, then I’d really hate to see what actually trying to hurt me would look like. Because I can’t think of a single thing that could be worse than this.”

“I can.” The man’s voice raised a notch. “Going through with something I know isn’t right would be worse. Walking down an aisle when I’m not ready to make those kind of vows would be worse.”

“The bride walks down the aisle, Ben, not the groom.”

Sudden understanding at what he was hearing thumped through him. He took a step backwards, but the moan of old hardwoods creaked underfoot and he froze. The couple currently on their way to not being a couple would know someone was here now, right? But then, they hadn’t heard the bell over the front door when he walked in.

“Can’t you see I’m trying to do the honorable thing? I could’ve dragged this out. I could’ve kept pretending.”

“So you were pretending when you proposed? When you told me you loved me and wanted to spend the rest of your life with me?”

What was wrong with Philip? He shouldn’t be listening to this. Shouldn’t have even come in the store, not when the chances were next to none that this Muir he was eavesdropping on was even slightly connected to his grandfather’s Muir. After all, that letter he’d discovered in Grandpa’s bedroom, the one addressed to a Maggie Muir in Muir Harbor, Maine, was almost fifty years old.

Grandpa. Again.

Well, if the man he’d known as Grandfather had ever sounded anywhere near as soft and affable as the man who’d written that letter the warmer title might’ve fit.

Affable. Ha! The writer of that note had been downright lovesick.