He held the door for her and she stepped through. “Do you want the wheelchair?” she asked.

He hesitated, looking down at the chair, his face creased with pain. “No,” he said. “I’ll walk into my daughter’s memorial and stand to speak at the podium.”

The dignified response tore at her heart as she slowly led the way down the narrow hall, past a storage room stacked with books, through the back office, and then into the bookstore showroom.

When she was a girl, Natalie used to start each day by skipping through the shop, calling good morning to her favorites as she passed them—Angelina Ballerina, Charlotte and Ramona, Lilly and her purple plastic purse. Then she would let herself out to catch the bus to school. Now a big portion of the shop was littered inside and out with tributes and notes of sympathy from the many people who had known her mother.

The front door was hung with a Closed sign and a printed announcement of the memorial. A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE OF BLYTHE HARPER.

Why was it called that when the last thing a grieving daughter wanted was a celebration?

She opened the door and cleared a path through the piled tokens that had been spontaneously left there—bouquets of flowers, dogeared novels and memorabilia, candles and handmade sketches and cards. The Lost and Found Bookshop had been a fixture on Perdita Street for as long as Natalie had been alive, and the sudden demise of its owner had inspired a huge, loving, and immensely sad reaction.

One thing Natalie had never wondered about until now: After the explosion of tributes, then what? Who picked up the wilted flowers, the rain-soaked poems, the blurred photos, the jarred candles?

The waiting black car smelled of canned deodorizer. The driver helped her grandfather into the back seat. Traffic was heavy even on a Saturday morning, and the drive to the Flood Mansion crawled along through wispy snakes of fog, past trees twisted and shaped by the wind, and along the slanting rooflines of the city’s Victorian Painted Ladies. Ringing cable cars lurched past bustling cafés and shops. As they wended their way upward, they broke through the fog and entered another microclimate, a sky of eye-smarting clarity that illuminated the city’s most splendid panoramas.

This had been Blythe Harper’s city, this peninsula crowned by forty-three “official” hills and surrounded by water, a place she swore she’d never leave. Yet she had left it, never to return, and now Natalie and Andrew had to scramble through the dark maze of unexpected grief.

“She told me she would be back on Friday night,” said Grandy, his eyes once again misted with confusion.

“That was her plan,” Natalie acknowledged.

“What the devil happened?”

Her mouth went dry. She said nothing.

“Natty-girl,” he said, using her nickname, “I know I’m forgetful, but I deserve to hear the truth.”