Promptly at four, Graydon locked the doors, and the entire library staff bolted to their cars, save Josh, who’d left hours earlier. We drove in a caravan to the county courthouse, me riding along with Holly. After a brief interlude while we waited for everyone to get through security, and a short period while we got lost in the vastness of a mosaic-tiled, oak-trimmed, coffered-ceilinged, hundred-year-old courthouse, we hurried into the district courtroom and literally slid into the long bench seats at the back of the room.

As we sat, a door on the far side of the courtroom opened and the black-robed district court judge walked in. Mia, in a gorgeous white calf-length dress, and Josh, surprisingly handsome in a suit I hadn’t known he owned, stood. Ranged behind them were Leese, Mia’s half sister, Mia’s mother and brother, a white-haired woman I assumed was her grandmother, and a separate group that, judging from the prevalence of thick black hair, had to be Josh’s family.

The judge, fiftyish with shoulder-length blond hair, looked up from her paperwork and smiled broadly. Five minutes later she said, “By the power invested in me by the state of Michigan, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride.”

And so Josh did.

Thoroughly.

*   *   *

After the wedding, Graydon forbade me to return to the library until the next day. “My advice,” he said, “is to go home and get some sleep, but you’re too young to want to do that, so instead I’ll advise doing nothing.”

I protested that I was fine, honest I was, that I wanted to get started on the job hunt for a new bookmobile driver and clerk, but when he asked what difference it would make if all that waited until the next day, and I couldn’t come up with any real answer, I sighed and said I’d see him in the morning.

Outside the courthouse, the wind had blown all the clouds to the east—sorry about that, Canada—revealing a crisp blue sky and the most gorgeous fall colors I’d seen in . . . okay, only a year, but it seemed longer.

Smiling at the world in general and Chilson in particular, I walked the streets, enjoying the sights, smells, and sounds of autumn. The slightly musky scent of fallen leaves composting themselves. How the trees were starting to reveal things they’d been hiding for months. The crisp, light clatter of leaves skittering along the sidewalk.

“Well, look what the wind tossed my way.”

Startled, I tore my mind away from the abstract and focused on my immediate surroundings. My feet had taken me on the route I’d formerly walked daily this time of year, from the library to the boardinghouse, where Celeste was on the front lawn, leaning on a rake.

“Hello there,” I said. “Do you need any help?”