Startled, Natalie got to her feet. “Good morning,” she said, giving him a quick hug. “I didn’t hear you get up.” She introduced him to Peach, hoping her grandfather was having a good day. She never knew if he would be with her, or if he would mentally wander off to places she couldn’t follow.

“Peach?” Grandy studied him. “A nickname, I assume.”

“My given name is Peter. I grew up in Georgia, and when I was in the Marines, the name stuck.”

“I see. Well, then. Thank you for your service.”

In one exchange, her grandfather had already learned more about the guy than Natalie had. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she was too closed off from people instead of extending herself and inviting them in. She thought she’d done that with Rick, yet they’d hit a dead end.

Dead end, she thought. You’re a horrible person, Natalie Harper.

“… a while ago,” Peach was telling Grandy. “I got to see the world when I was in the service.”

With the ponytail and pirate earring, he didn’t look like a marine at all, Natalie observed. He looked … She shut down the errant thought. She shifted focus and turned to Grandy. “So you know something about things hidden in the walls?” She brought the old box over to the coffee area, placing it on a table while she fixed him a coffee.

He offered a vague, sweet smile. The morning light played softly across his features and his neatly combed white hair. He had always paid attention to his grooming. Maybe this meant he was having a good day. Natalie had been dreading the day when he would be broken beyond repair, a day the books she’d been reading said would inevitably come.

Please, not today, she thought.

“Soldiers who had no home needed a place to leave their keepsakes when they were being shipped out, so they sometimes hid things in the walls of their favorite haunts.”

“Well, that’s remarkable. I had no idea.” She wondered what her mother would have said about the false cupboards and artifacts. She wished Mom were here to talk to. One of the most alarming things about losing her so suddenly was that Natalie questioned her own recall. Had she listened closely enough? Filed the memories away like digital documents?

“This building started out as a public house,” Grandy said. “We think the counter there was once the bar. Actually, this place was originally a saloon with a brothel upstairs.”

“You don’t say.” Peach looked around, taking in the high ceiling of hammered tin, the wainscoting with its many coats of paint, and the rolling ladder for reaching the top shelves.