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“You didn’t know.” It was confirmation, not a question.

“I… No.”

“Yep. I was just as surprised as you. Showed up a couple of months ago and moved right into the old house on Chestnut Street.”

Andy said automatically, “His grandparents’ house.”

“That’s right.” Millard’s pale gaze was speculative. “You and he used to be pretty tight. Back in the day.”

Back in the day, Andy had thought so too. He and Millard had both been wrong, as it turned out.

If Millard thought Andy’s stricken silence was strange, he didn’t show it. But hehadto remember. Had to remember sixteen years ago when Andy had walked into this station and accused Quinn Rafferty’s grandfather of murder.

And yet the chief just kept talking in that casual, friendly way, watching Andy, waiting for…what?

Millard said, “In fact, I always figured you were the one person who probably had some idea where he went when he took off like that.”

When Quinn had disappeared without a word. Without a trace. That’s what Millard meant.

Andy laughed. The sound was harsh and hurt his throat.

“You know what I thought. I thought he was dead.” He turned and walked out of the chief’s office.

It was a relief. A huge relief. The first piece of good news in a truly god-awful day.

But it was also another jolt.

All these years, he’d believed Quinn was dead. If not by his grandfather’s hand, then by some accident or misadventure. Because otherwise…

This was the part that shook him, that hurt even after all this time.

Because otherwise why wouldn’t Quinn have let him know where he was? Why wouldn’t Quinn have told Andy what was going on? After everything—after what they had meant to each other—

But it turned out Andy had been as wrong about that as all the rest of it. Clearly, Quinn had not felt the same.

It shouldn’t have mattered. For God’s sake. It had beensixteen years. It’s not like he was still mooning around, missing Quinn Rafferty. He went months, maybe even years never giving Quinn a thought at all. But they said you never forgot your first love, and when your first love mysteriously disappeared under what you’d always assumed were tragic circumstances, well, naturally that stuck in your memory. Had an influence on you. Even shaped your world view. In some ways.

And now it turned out that everything Andy had thought he’d known—had assumed—had been wrong.

Quinn Rafferty was alive.

Not only alive. Living in Safehaven again.

Full circle.

And Andy was very glad about that. Very happy and relieved to know that all that grief and fear and unhappiness had been unnecessary, unneeded. Sixteen years was too long to feel hurt about a situation he had clearly never understood anyway. But he did feel…

Surprised. Certainly. Shocked. A bit.

The truth was, he had much bigger concerns—much more real and pressing concerns—than the comings and goings of the long-ago teenaged boy Quinn Rafferty had been.

By the time Andy reached that reasonable conclusion, he was back at Time in a Bottle, unlocking the grilled glass front door, and ducking beneath the yellow crime-scene tape to let himself inside the dark shop. Across the way, the ocean wasspiky with whitecaps. He closed the door against the salt-laced wind that rattled every windowpane in the old building.

It was very quiet. Shadows from the harbor swayed soothingly against the low ceiling, like the swing of a clock’s pendulum.

As Andy’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he picked out a pale brocade-covered love seat, an unremarkable assortment of chests and tables and china, and a folding screen painted to look like bookshelves. Beneath the odor of crime-scene chemicals, he smelled the comfortable, familiar scents of wood polish and musty fabrics and old books. Or, as Uncle C. put it,the fragrance of life well-lived.

Life lived, for sure.