Chef Misty went back inside and I started walking home, back across downtown. The mix of scattered clouds we’d had earlier in the day had solidified into a low, thick mass. If we were lucky, the cloud cover would only hang on through the night and blow off in the morning. If we were unlucky, it would hang around for days.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check the hour-by-hour picture forecast on the weather app but decided against it. Sometimes a detailed forecast was a lose-lose situation. If the pictures were nothing but clouds as far as the forecast went, that would be depressing. Better to be happy to see any sunshine at all.

Then I smiled, because that was such an Aunt Frances thing to think. Maybe I was going to grow up to be like her after all, something that had been on my wish list for years.

Cheered, I moved into a fast walk, as there was nothing like a bit of exercise to clear the mind and make you feel alive. Not a lot of exercise, of course, because I didn’t want to get all hot and sweaty and then need to take another shower, but a marginally increased heart rate did a body good.

I decided to take a longer route than normal, turning left and skirting downtown by a couple of blocks. Back here were a handful of retail stores, a resale shop, and a place that sold incense and crystals, but it was mostly residential. Some homes were tidy and well cared for; others were in dire need of new roofs and fresh paint.

It was a neighborhood of transition. The stores rarely hung on for more than a year, and the houses were mostly rentals, leased mostly to people who worked in the hospitality industry, but weekly rentals for vacationers were starting to become popular and there were concerns about the future of area housing. If all these houses went to expensive weekly rentals, where would the people who worked in our restaurants and hotels live? They’d have to move farther out and drive in, like Keegan, and then—

My fast walk slowed. Was that . . . ? Why, yes, it was. Across the street, Skyler Ellison, still in black jeans and bright green shoes, had just parked an old battered sedan in the driveway of an equally battered house. He shut the driver’s door and it bounced back open.

I heard a mutter and he slammed it hard. It stayed shut that time, and he went around to the car’s trunk. He used a key to open it, leaned down to get an armload of groceries, and shut the trunk’s lid with his elbow. It, too, rebounded on him, and this time the mutter was louder and more distinct.