“Oh, well.” She tried smiling at him, hoping he’d remember some good deed she’d done for him as a kid. Maybe she’d retrieved his morning newspaper from the bushes once upon a time. “Me too. I put in a long day at the shop.”

He leaned against the side of her car as a fond smile added new wrinkles to his liver-spotted cheeks.

Inside Bailey hope surged, until she realized he was gazing not at her, but over her shoulder, at the store that was the new albatross around her neck.

“I bought my daughter her first Christmas ornament there,” he said. “She bought her daughter her first Christmas ornament there.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bailey said. “It’s an institution.” Albatross.

“A landmark,” the old man added, then bent his head back over his book of triplicate forms.

She wasn’t going to take a ticket. “What are you, uh, writing there, Mr. Baer? Because, you see, I’m in a bit of a hurry. Mom’s home alone, probably keeping dinner warm for me, and-”

“Dan’s really moved out then?” He stopped writing to squint at her over silver-rimmed bifocals. “Heard he’s in one of those ugly condos on the bay side.”

“Um, well…” Bailey wasn’t sure if her mother and stepfather’s recent separation was public knowledge, but heck, this was 7.4-square-mile Coronado. Secrets were impossible to keep, plus perhaps she could use the sympathy to wiggle out of whatever the Retired Citizen Patrolman had written on that little form. “They’ve been living apart since September.”

Mr. Baer nodded. “Heard one won’t step inside the shop if the other one’s there.”

“That’s true too.” Which had resulted in the frantic phone calls she’d been fielding from the part-time assistant manager and the guy who did the books-both old family friends. With her mother and Dan refusing to share the same air space, no one was minding the store. During the season when they made seventy-five percent of their year’s profits, this meant the likely end to a Coronado institution. A landmark.