He harbored no regrets about the way things had unfolded. He had the world’s most wonderful child and enough common sense to know, finally, that love took the heart by surprise. Lavinia was gone, but she had left behind the very best part of herself. Of them both.

“It was just the two of us,” Andrew told the gathering at Blythe’s memorial. Their faces were a distant blur, but memories stood out clearly in his mind. “She was my daily joy. It’s probably hard for you to imagine, but there was a time when the Lost and Found Bookshop was a typewriter showroom, with a letterpress printing operation in the basement. I made my living by fixing the very things a writer uses every day. Founding the bookshop was Blythe’s idea, and it was a great adventure for us both.”

The day Blythe went away to college, Andrew thought he might die from missing her. It was just across the bay in Berkeley, but it might as well have been in Timbuktu for all his lonely heart knew. He lived for the weekends when she would come home with high-flown ideas in her head and a collection of dirty laundry in a faded cloth bag, still stenciled with their name and Chinese characters. His typewriter business was in sharp decline thanks to the computer revolution, and he spent most of his days reading the antique books someone had left in the basement decades before. He became an expert at restoring the rare volumes, which he displayed in a glass-front barrister case. Every once in a while, a collector would come in and buy one of the books, and the enterprise became more than a hobby.

Four years later, Blythe returned home with a bachelor’s degree, a broken heart, and an unexpected pregnancy. She tearfully confessed that she had fallen in love with a teaching assistant who had promised her the world. She’d believed him, in her hopeful, romantic way, imagining a life of adventure with the young doctoral candidate.

Then she discovered in the most hurtful of ways that the man was already married and had three children.

Andrew’s private, selfish secret was that he couldn’t thank Dean Fogarty enough. The man who had broken his daughter’s heart had given Andrew a new purpose. Blythe had needed a way to provide for herself and her child. Andrew needed a fresh direction in life. Together, they had founded the bookstore, both energized by the prospect of creating a future for themselves and little Natalie.

He looked out at the gathering once again and brought the present moment into focus. Familiar faces, names lost in the cobwebs. There were ghosts as well, people who had left, yet remained a lingering presence in his mind. He had a fanciful thought that somehow they offered Blythe a loving welcome into their midst.

Please let it be true, he thought.