“What?” Natalie nearly choked on her cookie. “Tuition payments?”

Frieda fell still. “Oh, shit. You didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know. Now you need to tell me everything.”

“It’s … I wasn’t privy to all the details, but Dean paid your private school tuition. He set up a 529 plan for college, too. That’s what Blythe told me.”

“She didn’t tell me,” said Natalie. “Why didn’t she ever say anything?”

“Blythe had her pride. And her secrets. Shoot. I betrayed a confidence.”

“I don’t know, Frieda. Mom’s gone, so it’s okay that you told me. I’m glad you told me.” She started folding up chairs and putting them away, and Frieda pitched in. “Now what? Do I contact Dean?”

“That’s up to you, sweetie. Take your time, okay?”

“I will.” Natalie made a special display of Quill’s books and vowed to hand-sell every last one of them.

13

Early the next Saturday morning, Natalie woke up to the ominous beep of an alarm. Tipping her head to one side, she tried to pinpoint the source of the sound. It wasn’t the security alarm—that one was silent and an alert would have appeared on her phone. It wasn’t the shriek of the smoke alarm, either. Something from Grandy’s room? Since he’d wandered away, she’d reprogrammed the building security system to alert her when an exterior door opened.

She threw on a sweater and slippers and took the back stairs to her grandfather’s apartment. Through a crack in the door, she could hear the peaceful, soft whistle of his breathing. Without his hearing aids in, he tended to sleep soundly.

The beeping grew louder as she approached the basement door. Flipping on a light, she went down the stairs, noticing a dank smell. The light fell over the big old letterpress and the workbench where they cleaned up and restored the vintage books. When she reached the bottom step, her feet landed in ankle-deep cold water.

She gasped and jumped back onto the stairs. “What the hell?” she asked, shuddering and peering through the shadows. In a far corner of the space, a red button was blinking. Gritting her teeth, she waded over to it and pushed the button, and the alarm fell silent. “Damn it,” she muttered, wading back and then hurrying upstairs to find her phone. She peeled off her sodden slippers, then scrolled through her contacts.

Peach Gallagher picked up on the third ring with a sleepy “Yeah?”

“It’s Natalie Harper,” she said. “I’m sorry to call you on the weekend, but I didn’t know who else could help.”

A yawning sound came through the line. She pictured him in bed with his wife, who probably moaned and snuggled deeper under the covers. “What’s up?” he asked.

“I’ve got a flood in the basement. An alarm woke me up. Can you come?”