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Unless they were already cheating and trying to hide it. Bastards.
    “But you’re sure they’re married?”
    “They’re both wearing rings.”
    Owen mulled that over. “They could be widowed. Or divorced and not wanting to take their rings off.”
    “Possible,” I muttered. Unlikely , I thought. But still, he had a point, and I needed to keep my opinions to myself so I wouldn’t offend them and cause them to leave a terrible review somewhere.
    “Did you get cheated on?” Owen asked me gently when I pulled into a parking spot.
    I shrugged. “Nah,” I said, unwilling to volunteer that particular piece of information.
    “Oh good. You just seem so sensitive to it, that’s all.”
    “It’s awful, I think. To cheat on someone. It seems like one of the worst things you can do to the person you’re supposed to love.”
    “Yeah.” Owen’s gaze was far away for a second. “Maybe.”
     

     
    Owen and I parted ways so he could rent his car and I could do my grocery shopping. As suspected, Elisa had sent me a whole list of things I needed beside eggs, and I grabbed a cart to start my round. It didn’t take long since I knew the store like the back of my hand, and while I loaded things in the truck, my phone dinged again.
    “Elisa, if that’s you needing more stuff,” I grumbled, “you’re out of luck.” But it was an unknown number.
    Car all sorted, will drive myself home. How about some coffee first, just me and you? —O.
    I chewed my lip. Tempting as it was to caffeinate myself while basking in Owen’s beauty, something else was eating away at me.
    Need to run some more errands, sorry, I texted back, and pocketed my phone. I had another hour before I needed to pick up my canoodling couple, so I got in the car and drove to our little library.
    The Carnegie library in Jackson was a beautiful place built in the early 1900s and as a young teen trying to escape my grandmother’s house, I’d spent a lot of time there. Not so much recently, though, and it took me a while before I found the computers and got myself logged in.
    At first I did a quick Google search, but just like Elisa’s, it came up empty. I went into the library’s own search engine and typed in Gabriel Wickfield . It came up with nothing again. I sat back and sighed, about to give up, when I saw a different search option, offering historical images.
    On a whim, I tried it. Two photographs showed up. One was black and white of a bunch of children, clearly in a classroom. Beside the photograph was a list of information, including the name of the school—a building that had been torn down a long time ago—the year ‘1897’, and a bunch of children’s names. I scanned them all. Front row, second row, then there, on the third row . Gabriel Wickfield .
    I squinted at all the kids, but the photograph was so grainy I couldn’t identify any of them as my friendly and handsome ghost.
    I clicked back to the list and selected the second photograph. And there he was. Still black and white, still grainy, but undeniably Gabriel. Photograph taken in 1915 , it said, and I had another one of those holy shit moments that rarely happened anymore because of Gabriel. I’d gotten so used to having him around, but Jesus.
    1915.
    He wore a different suit, but had that same rakish smile going on, the twinkle in his eye noticeable even in the sepia photograph. I wondered what he’d done to deserve being kept in the archives, and noticed there was an article attached to the photograph with a drop-down link. I clicked on it.
    Naval officer dies on horseback following deviant scandal.
    I gasped and blinked at the screen. Part of me thought this was private and I should really close this window, but I was too curious not to read it.
    Detroit, Mi, Dec. 26. — Following the suicide of Sheriff Heathcliff F. Heartland, Naval Officer H. Gabriel Wickfield took a fatal fall yesterday afternoon at his family’s estate in Jackson, Michigan. Facing charges of imprisonment