Even if Wilder couldn’t prove she was the woman’s missing granddaughter, well, now she knew CarleeAnn Picknell was originally from Muir Harbor too. Maybe she could learn more about her. Discover other relatives.

And as for the young man from that old photograph—JP, according to the scribbled note on the back—what if she could find him? What if he were really her father? Neither CarleeAnn nor Diana were alive anymore, but he might be.

A father . . . She might have a father somewhere out there.

Suddenly, she needed to move. Needed a moment away from the clutter of voices and music and Nikola’s loving but prying gaze. “My hands . . . sticky . . . bathroom.”

Nikola apparently interpreted that just fine, nodding and waving her off. But by the time Sydney moved past the line of stools and wove through the crowd in front of the cash register, she’d decided to skip washing her hands and head out the bakery’s back door instead. Fresh air, that’s what she needed.

And maybe enough quiet to make a call to Wilder and—oh goodness, was she actually considering this?

Oomph. The restroom door swung open just as she was passing it.

“Syd?”

She whirled. “Micah? When did you get—” Shock stole the rest of her words as she glimpsed his bruised cheek. His black eye. His bloodied lip. “What happened?”

He lifted a wet paper towel to his lip. “Nothing I want to talk about.”

No, of course not. He never did. Not when he’d borrowed her car without asking and wrecked it. Not a couple of years back when there’d been that trouble at his workplace, accusations of stealing. Not after the bar brawl only a few months before that, not to mention a night in jail and her late for another shift at Mezzani’s after bailing him out.

“If you’re in trouble—”

“Don’t look at me like that, Syd.” His stylish camo-print jacket was open to reveal a black tee underneath, his sandy brown hair still gelled into submission despite whatever scuffle he’d been in already this morning.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m fifteen again and standing outside your dorm room begging to come live with you. I feel pathetic enough without your pity.”

“I’m not . . . you’re not . . .” Somehow, despite everything—her fatigue from a sleepless night, her frustration, all the foggy thoughts assailing her since the moment Wilder Monroe had chased her down—compassion found its way to the surface. The same compassion that had gripped her on Micah’s first night at the Jacobsens’, when she’d heard his sobs and slipped off the top bunk, innocently crawled in beside him below and read to him until he fell asleep.

“I love you, Micah. I just . . . I don’t know how to help you anymore.”

He lifted his head, something hard in his eyes. “I didn’t ask for your help this time.” With that, he skulked down the tiny hall and out the door at the back of the bakery.