He was so serious that Angie was a little taken aback. “Why is that?”

“Because of Miss Annie. The librarian? She’s got a bad case of the curiosities, and everybody knows it. You couldn’t write anything down in that book without Miss Annie right behind you, like white on rice. And then she’ll talk about it.”

“Ah.” Angie thought for a moment. “You have a better idea where to put the book?”

“Yes, ma’am, I do. There’s only one place in town where everybody goes, and that’s the Piggly Wiggly. Wouldn’t nobody be watching, either, when folks want to spend a few minutes writing. Not if you put it over by the recycling bins?” He glanced over to the men around the barbecue grill and then cleared his throat. “I work there, at the Piggly Wiggly, bagging? I could keep an eye on it for you, make sure the younger kids don’t get up to mischief. If you want. Just an idea.”

“A good one,” Angie said. “Thank you.”

He backed away, scratching his chin distractedly. “Well, it was sure nice talking to you.”

“Markus, if you have any other ideas, I hope you won’t keep them to yourself. And come by with one of your tapes this week. I’m in the studio most afternoons.”

He gave her a real grin, shy and sweet.

“Hey, Markus! If you’re through flirting, move your skinny butt. Father Bruce is here.”

An older man wearing a roman collar had appeared on the porch with a large bundle in his arms, and boys were running toward him from all directions. Markus gave her one last apologetic glance and trotted off to join the rest of Junie Rose’s twelve grandsons—the youngest seven, the oldest close to twenty.

“Oh, Lordie,” called one of the ladies in the circle around Miss Junie. “What’s Bruce up to this time?”

Angie sat up straighter. She had heard stories about the local priest and had put him on her list of people to interview, but the last place she had thought to run into him was at Miss Junie Rose’s birthday party. And yet, there he was, a slight man of more than sixty and less than eighty in an old soutane that was more gray than black, lopsided eyeglasses with lenses the size of silver dollars, and a halo of pure white hair standing straight up around a pink scalp. He looked like an elf up to mischief.

“Bruce means well, but he does work those grandnephews of his up into a frenzy.”