Сьюзен Виггз: The Lost and Found Bookshop

She lightly traced her finger over the tattoo on his upper arm. “A shamrock?”

He shrugged. “Cheesy, I know. Proof I was young once.” He tuned up her old guitar and played her a song—“What About Your Heart?”—and she melted. “I wrote that right after we met,” he said.

“What? No.”

“Yes. You were looking after everyone but yourself. I saw it every day. You kept putting yourself last on the list. Don’t do that, Natalie.”

“I just wanted to make a nice home for my grandfather.”

“You did a good job. I liked this place the minute I saw it,” Peach said. “The furniture, the girly smells. I got a boner every time I walked past this bed,” he told her.

“How romantic.”

“I’m not being romantic. I’m being real. This is not our first rodeo,” he said. “The first time I saw you, you were crying and I saw these sweet abs . . .” He traced them with his finger, light as a feather. “And I felt like a jerk because I didn’t know you but I still wanted to . . .” He bent his head and lightly brushed kisses across her skin until she gasped. He looked up at her. “The way I feel about you is . . .” He took hold of her wrists and pressed them down above her head, and he moved on top of her and they were at it again, more slowly this time, urgency giving way to tender exploration.

Endless minutes later, she felt a gentle bump, and the candle flame flickered wildly. She froze, looking up at Peach. He was frowning.

“Earthquake,” she whispered.

“Yeah? Damn, I’ve never felt one before.”

“Pretty sure I’m right.” She reached over and turned on a light.

A second later, the rumble was followed by shaking and rolling. The light blinked. The pictures on the walls swayed. Books jumped from the shelves. Somewhere in the distance, several alarms sounded.

Peach rolled off her and sat up. “What do we do?”

She pulled him to a doorway and grabbed on to the frame for maybe thirty seconds, which felt like a lifetime. Peach held her with one arm. “Damn, girl. We made the earth move. Cool.”

“Ha, ha.” She couldn’t help smiling, but as soon as the shaking stopped, she said, “Let’s go check on Grandy, make sure he’s okay.”

“We’d better get dressed first,” he said, grinning at her.

They threw on clothes and raced downstairs together. Grandy was sitting up in bed, putting in his hearing aids. The lights flickered again, then stayed on.

“Everything okay?” Natalie asked him.

He put on his spectacles and gazed at her, then at Peach, taking in her hastily donned Giants T-shirt and Peach’s bare chest, his jeans with the top button undone. “Everything is fine,” he said. “I’m going to turn on the news.”

“Oh God. He knows,” Natalie said as they went down and entered the bookstore.

“He’s always known.” Peach took hold of her shoulders from behind and nuzzled her neck.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He said something almost as soon as I got to work on his place. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if he was talking about you or your mom.”

“What did he say?”

Peach turned her in his arms. “That you’ve been disappointed in love. But you’ve never disappointed anyone.” He placed his lips on her forehead and held still, gently pressing. “I won’t disappoint you, Natalie. You picked a good one.”

She shut her eyes and leaned into him. At last , she thought.

“Hey,” Peach whispered, brushing his thumb across her cheek. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re my glimmer.” She blotted her tears with her shirtsleeve.

“I’m a glimmer?”

“A short time ago, the shop was going into receivership. I was about to take my grandfather to court to have him declared incompetent so I could make the decision to sell it. I needed a glimmer. Just one little glimmer of hope.” She looked up at him, put the flat of her hand on his bare chest, over his heart. “That’s what you are.”

“Oh, baby—”

“But I’m moving, and you have to stay here for Dorothy, and I don’t see how—” The lights blinked yet again. This time they went out. “Oh, no. Now what?”

Peach went to the front door and looked out. “The rest of the neighborhood’s still on. Let’s check the breakers.” He turned on his phone flashlight and moved the beam around the room.

“Oh, man.” It seemed half the books had leaped off the shelves and tables. A few stoneware mugs had shattered in the coffee area.

“I’ll go check the breaker box.”

She followed him to the basement. He opened the box and flipped the main switch. “I wonder why it tripped,” he murmured, pulling the string of the overhead light. “Oh, shit,” he said, surveying a crack that went from the floor to the back wall. “Looks like some damage here.”

Natalie’s heart sank as she assessed the crumbled brick and earth. “Great. Just when the buyer was about to make an offer.” She stepped closer and spotted a large gap behind the broken wall.

Peach shone his light at it. “There’s something down here.”

“Fortunato,” she whispered.

“Who?”

“You know, from the Poe story—‘The Cask of Amontillado.’ Guy bricks his friend up in the basement wall.”

“Some friend. Never read it, though.”

“Finally, I schooled you in something.”

He grabbed her and gave her a long, deep kiss. “You schooled me in everything, Natalie Jean Harper.”

“Inga,” she said.

“What?”

“My middle name is Inga, same as my mom’s. We’re named after her grandmother Inga.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Is the building safe?” she asked, looking down at the cracked floor.

He thumped his fist on the wall. “You’ll need an inspection.” He removed a few loose bricks and peered into the gap. “There’s some kind of locker or tool chest.”

“More war medals?” asked Natalie.

“Too big for that.” He grabbed a shovel from the rack of tools.

Working together, they moved the fallen bricks and debris and eased the box out through the gap. The thing was the size of a table, and it weighed a ton. They slid it along the broken floor and brought it to the workbench under the window, where the light streamed in from the just-risen sun. The locker was covered in dust and scratches, and the latches and hinges were corroded. And it was locked.

“Should I force it?” asked Peach.

Natalie remembered the old key they’d found lodged in the sump pump. “I have an idea,” she said. “Wait here.”

She dashed upstairs and grabbed the key from the jar on her desk. “This is the one you found when the basement flooded.”

Peach gave it a try. After some jimmying, the key went in and he was able to turn it. “I’ll be damned,” he murmured. He gave the hinges a spray of lubricant and pried the big box open. Inside lay four large, flat parcels wrapped in what appeared to be waxed canvas. Each parcel contained a leather case like a portfolio.

“Maybe these are more drawings,” Peach said.

Natalie could barely hear him through the pounding in her ears. She didn’t dare speak as she unbuckled the first cover.

Then she stopped breathing. The book was huge, bound in red Morocco leather with gilt borders. “These are not Colleen’s drawings.”

She had to remind herself to breathe as she lifted the heavy cover to reveal an elaborate frontispiece with copperplate lettering. “I think maybe we found … my God, Peach. I need to sit down.” She lowered herself to a stool. “What if we found The Birds of America ?”

“An Audubon book, you mean. Cool.”

“No. I mean, yes. I always thought it was a family legend, for sure. But then we found Colleen’s journals, and now this . . .”