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own cathedral to books. But that was a bit much. She wouldn’t tell him that.
    “The old bones of the church make it feel like a temple.”
    Lucy’s eyes widened. She cleared her throat and led him out. “Here, through the garden.” The heavy door slammed behind them.
    “Would I always have to walk through the bookstore?”
    She should have led him through the outside gate. She wasn’t thinking clearly.
    “Of course not. Sorry. There’s a walkway there, see?”
    “Nice roses,” he said, and he actually sounded like he meant it.
    “I pay a kid a few bucks to prune and water and weed. I don’t have a green thumb.”
    “My mom loves roses.”
    Lucy didn’t know how to answer that, so she hurried up the path to the front door of the tiny house.
    “This is it.” She unlocked the door and pushed it open. Damn, she should have aired it out this afternoon. It still smelled of the last girl’s penchant for patchouli.
    “Kitchen,” she pointed. “Gas appliances. Washer and dryer are just off there.”
    “Fine.”
    “It’s tiny,” she said. Why did she feel like she should apologize? “It was built to be the parsonage, but I think that was a fancy name for what’s more like a one-bedroom house. No study, no library, no servants’ quarters. Just the threadbare carpet and lots of candle sconces to earn its name.”
    She flipped on the lights in the hallway and led him to the far door. “Also, there’s a parlor, with the original furniture. I don’t recommend the blue chair. There’s an unruly spring I haven’t been able to fix. But that settee is actually comfortable.”
    He nodded. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and it made her nervous. And nerves made her chatty. “It was originally an Episcopalian church, and the parsonage was built at the turn of the last century. But the church went rogue in the twenties, with a pastor who bought the buildings and took the church in more of a fundamentalist direction. By the sixties, that same old pastor was caught hoarding guns for the Apocalypse and had lost all but three of his church members. When he died, his widow sold everything to my grandmother and moved to Florida to be with her grandchildren. My grandmother Ruby lived happily back here for the rest of her life.”
    “How did you end up with this? And with the bookstore?”
    Lucy turned her back to him, and then she pulled open a small door. “Extra storage here, next to the hot water heater. When she died, she left it all to me. I’m the book girl. My brothers are big readers, but they didn’t want the store.”
    “It’s what you always wanted? To follow in her footsteps?” Owen sounded interested, and Lucy couldn’t remember the last time someone sounded that way.
    She nodded. “I was always the reader in the family. And when I was little I wanted to be a writer, but then when I realized writers didn’t make any money, I wanted to sell books instead. And I’ve always been a knitter. It’s what I do. I know it must sound pretty boring to someone like you . . .” Lucy felt a small flame of embarrassment.
    But he smiled at her instead. Laugh lines she didn’t remember folded at the corners of his eyes. “You never lived back here, though?”
    “No, too small. So many memories, and I can’t get rid of one thing that’s in here. I don’t like to change it around from the way she had it. You know? The income from the store and the rental allowed me to buy a little house in town a few years ago. Better that way. God, these shelves are dusty. And oh, there’s a cemetery out there. Guess I should mention that. No one’s been buried in it for ages, though.” Lucy brushed off her hands and shut the small closet door.
    Owen nodded. He touched the base of a silver candelabra still propped on a low table. “The ceilings are nice.” He looked up at the exposed wooden beams.
    Lucy felt her stomach flip. “Yeah,” she said. “They’re my favorite part.”
    Lucy’s cell phone rang,