“That’s some bad shit,” he muttered. He knew he needed to be careful with the removal so nothing would be released from the unit. Even a tiny pinhole could be a hazard. He kept the thing intact, holding it in a vertical position, and placed it into a thick plastic contractor bag, then put the bag into a five-gallon bucket and surrounded it with sawdust to hold it in place. He labeled it Mercury—do not open. Then he set the thing in a box in an empty shed and called the transfer station to pick it up. The client wasn’t going to be happy with the disposal charge, but it was better than getting mercury poisoning.

He sent a message to his client and stayed late at the job site. Dorothy was at her mother’s, and Peach had nothing going on. He took a break to sit on the front steps and chow down on a burrito. The porch was a shipwreck of peeling paint and broken fretwork, but it was going to be a beauty once he finished. For the moment, it was a fine place to survey the neighborhood despite the winter chill. From his vantage point, he could look down Lombard Street, sloped like a ski jump toward the waterfront.

Natalie had told him that the journals she’d found described a parade of soldiers heading to the docks on their way to the war in the Philippines. Had they been like him when he joined the Marines, vacillating between adrenaline-fueled excitement and gutdeep dread, wondering what they’d gotten themselves into? He’d been barely eighteen when he plunged into twelve weeks of boot camp followed by combat training—and then deployment. He’d been in a daze, having to pivot from his plan to study architecture at Emory to cashing in his college plan so his sister could go to rehab. Natalie had been incredibly gracious when he’d told her about the situation. She was a damn good listener.

Natalie again. His thoughts always seemed to circle back to her. She was the first person since the divorce he actually thought he could love. He actually wanted to love.

His phone buzzed, and his client’s number came up. “Hey, Dr. Jantzen,” he said.

“I got your message about the radiator. Good thing you caught that,” Jantzen said. “Even a little bit of mercury is toxic as hell.”

Peach exhaled a sigh of relief. He’d come way too close to chopping up the unit with his Sawzall. “I followed the guidelines to the letter, except I used sawdust instead of kitty litter when I packed it up.”

“That’s good. If you catch yourself having an epic stomachache or slurring your speech, go see your doctor. There’s a whole host of symptoms associated with mercury, and even just inhaling the vapors can cause organ or neurological damage, anything from mood swings to respiratory and abdominal ailments to tremors.”