Chapter One

The vase had a crack running from rim to base, thin as a hair and twice as stubborn. Sally turned it slowly under the light, tilting it until the flaw caught the gray San Francisco afternoon coming through the tall windows. Fixable. Everything in this shop was fixable, given enough patience and the right pair of hands.

She set it down on the counter and straightened up, pressing both palms into the small of her back. Preston Antiquities had the scent it always did—old wood, metal polish, and the faint ghost of her father's pipe tobacco, though he'd quit years before he died. She'd never had the heart to air it out completely.

The fog had rolled in thick off the bay, turning the street outside into a watercolor. Through the window, Hot Brew glowed amber across the road, Kelly's lunch rush just visible through the glass—heads bent over laptops, hands wrapped around mugs, the reliable choreography of people who needed caffeine and a reason to leave the house.

From the workroom came a sound—a very small, very precise argument between a metal tool and an inanimate object.

"Bobby." Sally didn't raise her voice. The shop wasn't big enough to require it.

"One minute." He stopped abruptly. "Thirty seconds."

"I didn't actually ask you anything."

"Pre-emptive."

She smiled and picked up the vase once more.

Bobby Somers emerged two minutes later, which was close enough. He had neon blue hair, a goatee that had opinions about itself, and a Metallica shirt that had survived more estate clearances than most antiques. A pair of fine-tipped tweezers stuck out of his breast pocket. He looked, as always, as if he'd taken a wrong turn at a music festival and ended up somewhere better.

"The Edwardian letter box is fighting me." He dropped onto his usual stool behind the register and reached for the mug he'd been nursing since they'd opened. "It's got a secondary lock mechanism that isn't in any of the catalogs. I think someone added it in the thirties. Maybe forties."

"Is it a problem?"

"No, it's incredible." He took a long sip and grimaced. "I just want to understand it before I touch it."

This was Bobby's version of a normal Tuesday.

Sally's phone buzzed next to her elbow. She glanced at it without picking it up, which was how she'd been handling Axel's messages since yesterday.

Bobby clocked the face she made. "Still confirming?"

"For the fourth time. He's very thorough."

"What's his job again?"

"Funeral home owner."

Bobby set down his mug carefully. "Hm."

"Kelly's words exactly, but with more hand gestures."

On cue, the door swung open and Kelly arrived as if she'd been mid-sentence somewhere else and was continuing it here. She was holding two cups from Hot Brew, her blonde hair damp at the ends from the humidity, cheeks pink from the cold.

"I come bearing emergency provisions." She set a cup in front of Sally. "You've got that look."

"What look?"

"The one where you're deciding whether to cancel but you won't because you think you owe the universe another chance."

Sally wrapped both hands around the cup. Oat milk latte, one sugar—Kelly hadn't needed to ask in about six years. "He could be perfectly nice."

"He could absolutely be perfectly nice." Kelly leaned against the counter. "He could also open with a thirty-minute monologue about embalming fluid, and I want you to be caffeinated either way."

"For what it's worth"—Bobby's eyes never left his phone—"I did some research."

Both women turned.

"The funeral industry has a thirty-two percent higher-than-average incidence of what social scientists call mortality salience—a heightened, sometimes intrusive awareness of death—which can manifest in conversation as—"

"Bobby."

"—an inability to read the room during—"

"Bobby."

He glanced up. "I'm just saying there are statistics."

"There are always statistics." Kelly shook her head. "That's not the same as helpful."

"My advice is data-driven."

"Your advice last month was that Sally should open dates by asking whether the other person believes in cryonics."

"It's an efficient filter."

Sally took a long sip of her latte. It was, genuinely, the best thing that had happened to her today, and it was three in the afternoon.

She lowered her cup. "All I need is one normal evening. One dinner where no one describes a viewing room before the appetizers arrive."

Kelly raised her cup. "Low bar. I respect it."

"The bar is in a trench," Bobby agreed.

"Thank you both. Really." Sally glanced at the time on her phone and winced. She needed to go home, change, and reconstruct enough optimism to survive a restaurant. "Can you finish the walkthrough before you lock up? The Hendricks credenza needs the rear panel reattached before Thursday."

Bobby was already heading to the workroom. "Already on my list."

"It's actually on a list?"

"No. But I'll remember it."

"That's somehow more alarming."

Kelly waited until he was gone, then turned with the expression Sally recognized as I'm going to say something and I need you to let me say it.

"He's probably fine," Kelly muttered.

"He's probably fine," Sally agreed.

"And if he's not—"

"I'll text you in all caps."

"Use the skull emoji. I'll know." Kelly squeezed her arm once, brisk and warm, and headed across the street to her second afternoon rush.

Sally stood alone in the shop for a moment, listening to Bobby's focused monologue addressed to the letter box. She grabbed her bag, straightened her jacket, and told herself—without quite believing it—that tonight might be a beginning.

A cable car clanged past on the hill above, indifferent to her romantic prospects, as cable cars in San Francisco tended to be.