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gum wrappers on the sidewalk.
    The sign for John Sawyer & Sons, Attorneys swung gently beneath the green-striped awning that shaded the sidewalk. Sawyer-the-lawyer, as he was known, had had his sign painted before his sons informed him they intended to become a doctor and an insurance salesman. Nevertheless, the wording remained, and Elizabeth liked to imagine old Mr. Sawyer pretending one of his sons sat in the office above his.
    Of course, it wasn’t a Sawyer who sat there, she thought as she pushed open the tall glass front door. It was a Chalmers.
    Elizabeth gripped the Bible, as if it might somehow give her strength.
    “May I help you, Liz?” John Sawyer’s secretary had moved to Ambleside from Jefferson City after a divorce. Joanne’s eyes wore a sadness Elizabeth never failed to note. “Mr. Sawyer just left to go to lunch. You can wait, but it might be a while.”
    “No, actually, I, uh, I came to visit with Mr. Chalmers. The, uh, the new architect?” She gestured vaguely at the stairwell. “Isn’t he renting some space upstairs?”
    “Oh, sure, but you can’t get to his office this way. You have to go through that outside door, then down the hall, turn left, up a flight, and then—shall I just take you there?”
    “No, it’s OK. I’ll find my way.”
    “Good luck. You’re going to need it.”
    With that fateful pronouncement, she went back to her dictation as Elizabeth left the office and started through the maze-like back of the building. Finders Keepers was a warren of little rooms and narrow hallways, too. In the old days, she supposed, the buildings around Ambleside’s main square had housed not only shops but storage rooms and the homes of the families who owned them … just as her antiques shop did today. It pleased her that she and Nick had found the conveniently located building and had been able to afford the rent.
    Darkness shrouded the interior as she climbed the narrow stairs and worked her way through the honeycomb of hallways. Cobwebs hung from door frames. Dust coated wood-paneled walls. Floorboards creaked under threadbare brown carpet. At the end of a long hall she spotted a thin line of light under a closed door. Her heart in her throat, she approached and knocked.
    Inside she could hear papers shuffling, a chair rolling across the floor, the squeak of metal springs, footsteps. The door swung open.
    “Hello, Mr. Chalmers, I—”
    “Elizabeth Hayes!” A broad smile lit up eyes that were most definitely green. “Hey, welcome to my office. This is a nice surprise.”
    Disarmed, she took in a large room, a tilted drafting table, walls hung with blueprints, and a tall case filled with books. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
    “Nah, I was just winding up the sketch for a little alcove area in a state government building I’m designing in Jeff City. If you’ll give me a second …”
    “Sure. Don’t hurry.” Feeling out of place and wishing she were anywhere but here, Elizabeth stepped into the office and sat down on a cardboard box near the door. She studied her adversary’s broad shoulders bent over his drafting table. The last time they had spoken, she all but threw him out of her shop. And yet the sight of her had brought a dazzling smile to his face and a sparkle to his eyes.
    Nick had been stuck on the man’s dark hair and green eyes ever since he decided he needed a daddy. The awareness of loss in her son’s short life always twisted Elizabeth’s heartstrings. His birth mother had placed him in an orphanage the day he was born. His birth father was unknown, and no record existed of siblings or other relatives in Romania.
    Elizabeth’s own family was limited. Her parents had been killed in a car accident when she was a child. She had been raised by her widowed grandmother, who had died some years ago. In reality, there was almost no one for Nick to put on his family tree. She had moved mountains to give her son a good life, and she would do anything to ensure