Mia had managed to convince Izzy that the entryway into Sammy’s morgue wasn’t the place to talk further about suicide notes, but she doubted she’d bought herself much time.

She couldn’t think about that now, though. She had to concentrate on making herself take a step toward the house.

That ache was back, the one that was a tangled mess of emotions she couldn’t quite name.

Home.

It had been fifteen years since she’d stood on this sidewalk, since she’d walked through that door. Sweat gathered at her hairline despite the cold. Flee, her body begged.

“Is that little Mia Hart?” a voice called from somewhere to her right. Mia flinched as sound beyond the buzzing in her own ears returned to the world.

In the dim, fading light of an already-dark day, it was hard to make out more than just a shape standing on the stoop of the house next to Mama’s. But Mia knew who it was. “Mrs. Edwards.” She lifted a hand in a small wave, then moved toward the house, keeping her head down.

“You home then, dear?” Natalie Edwards had never been one to be deterred from good gossip.

“A few days.” Mia stopped on the porch. Knocking wouldn’t be appropriate, not on the door of her childhood home. But walking right in after being gone for more than a decade felt wrong, too. Unsure what to do, Mia froze while Natalie’s eyes devoured her every hesitancy.

“For that man who ended up in the ocean, I suppose,” Natalie called.

Mia pivoted just a bit at the question, the delay almost welcome. “You ever see him around, Mrs. Edwards?”

“We all did, didn’t we?” Natalie said in that universally noncommittal way everyone on the island seemed to be born knowing how to do. “A nosy so-and-so.”

Izzy shifted beside her as if she were considering going over and interviewing Natalie. “Did you ever talk to him?”

Natalie’s gaze flicked to Mia before returning to Izzy, and the pause before she answered felt like a lie in and of itself. “About the weather if I saw him in the shop. Nothing more.”

“Who did he speak to?” Mia tried.

“Oh, he tried to talk to everyone, dear.” Natalie’s shoulders relaxed, her fingers loosening. Back in the comfortable safety of vague answers. “No one was too keen on chatting to him, though.”

That, Mia believed. “He never mentioned what he was working on?”

Again, Natalie tensed, her eyes on Mia’s face. “He was real secretive, that one. Not that I’m one to speak ill of the dead.”

“Squirrelly, you might say,” Izzy muttered, low enough so only Mia would hear her.

Mia swallowed a short laugh. “Okay, thank you. If you remember anything else in specific . . . ?”