As if. Aunt Frances was the most empathic person I’d ever had the pleasure to know. She hid it under a thick layer of wry humor, but her true colors were obvious to anyone who knew her longer than five minutes. Sometimes I was staggered that we were blood relatives. She was tall, and I was . . . not. She had those Katharine Hepburn cheekbones and I didn’t. Her hair was miles from the unmanageable mess that mine was, and her mechanical aptitude was legendary. In my dad and brother, those genes had translated into engineering professions, but they’d skipped me altogether. Which was fine with me. Why did I need any mechanical skills when I had Aunt Frances, Rafe, a host of friends, and a cell phone?

Months ago, Aunt Frances had declared her intention to retire at the end of the school year, but lately she’d started to say things like “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with myself this fall.” I wasn’t sure if she was planning ahead, or having second thoughts about retiring, but I had decided not to poke my nose into the topic.

“Working noon to eight,” I said, explaining about Rafe’s board meeting. “Did you see my text about the wedding date?”

“Inked in on my calendar.” She waved a hand at a wall calendar featuring scenic photos from around the world. “We’ll delay our trip to Door County. You can thank me now.”

“Thank you,” I said automatically.

“You’re welcome.” She shoved her mug against mine, making a quiet tink. “Congratulations. You’re getting married.”

“Too far away to get excited.”

Aunt Frances laughed. “You realize mid-September is only five and a half months away.”

I nodded. “Weeks and weeks and weeks. Like more than . . . um . . . twenty. And way more than twenty days. Lots of time. Oodles, even.”

“Mmm.” My aunt gave me a look.

“I’m trying to be like you,” I said.

“Which part? The arthritic hands or the gray hair?”

“The part where you don’t worry about hardly anything.”

“Oh, that.” Aunt Frances continued to look at me in a way that made me want to squirm like a five-year-old caught in a blatantly obvious lie about puppies and peas left on a plate. “You do realize that while worrying about things over which you have no control is pointless, worrying about things you can control is appropriate.”

My hand that wasn’t clutching the coffee mug made a rolling get-on-with-it motion. “Moving forward. I’m here because my plan for deep background research on Ryan Anderson didn’t work out. I’m moving on to Plan B.” Which was almost always the same thing: Ask Aunt Frances.

“Who is Ryan Anderson?” she asked.

Huh. Plan B had hit an unexpected snag. “Mid-twenties,” I said. “Five nine or ten. Short-ish brown hair. Not fat, not thin.”