Chapter 27

She lifted her fist to the door and knocked louder, any guilt she should have felt over the late hour paling in comparison against the need to vent. Sure, she’d heard of would-be home buyers taking things when Realtors weren’t looking, but to do that to Bart? With something that meant so much to him?

It wasn’t right.

It wasn’t right at all.

“Mr. Nelson?” she called between knocks. “It’s me. Winnie. Could we talk?”

Pulling her hand back, she pressed her ear to the door and listened.

Nothing.

Defeated, she stepped back, turned toward the stairs, and began the slow climb to the top, trying, with each step, to envision Lovey as a sounding board. Technically, with Lovey, Winnie didn’t have to worry about malfunctioning hearing aids and having to repeat herself all the—

The door at the top of the steps creaked open, and Mr. Nelson peered out from her entryway. “Well, would you lookee who’s here, Lovey. It’s your momma.”

“Mr. Nelson!” She ran the rest of the way up the steps and into her apartment, the welcoming hiss from the living room barely registering against her excitement. “I was just knocking on your door, hoping you weren’t asleep yet.”

“Asleep? With you still out and about?” Mr. Nelson pushed the door shut behind her and caned his way into the living room. When he reached Lovey’s armchair, he snapped his fingers for the cat to move and then sat.

“How did you do that?” she asked, awestruck. “She won’t give up that chair for me.”

“Give it time, Winnie Girl. She’ll come around.” A quick pat on his lap brought Lovey back to the chair (and Mr. Nelson’s lap) with an audible purr. “Been out with that fella you were telling me about, have you?”

“Fella?”

“The one with the daughter.”

Jay . . .

She shook the business professor’s image from her thoughts and lowered herself onto the couch. “I was with Mark.”

“Hark? That’s the fella’s name?”

Waving aside his words, she leaned forward and spoke louder. “I was with Mark, Mr. Nelson.”

“Mark?”

At his continued confusion, she added more information. “Mark Reilly. Bart’s son.”

“Mark has a daughter?” Mr. Nelson asked. “Does Bridget know this?”

She allowed herself to sink backward against the cushion, grabbing a throw pillow and hugging it to her chest as she did. “If Mark had a daughter, Bridget would know.”

Mr. Nelson took a moment to nod in agreement and then turned up the volume in his right ear. “I’m not sure Mark is the right man for you, Winnie.”

“We weren’t on a date, Mr. Nelson. I just happened to see him when I went for a walk. He was painting the walls in his new pool hall.” She thought back to her evening and the rare side of Mark she’d witnessed. “He’s doing a nice job. Bart would be proud of him.”

“He always was proud of that boy. Sometimes he had to search real hard to find something worth being proud of, but he always managed to find something.”

“Bart had decided to sell, Mr. Nelson. Those flyers I saw were his idea.” At Mr. Nelson’s obvious skepticism, she amended her statement to help fill in the gaps. “I mean, the initial idea was Mark’s, but the decision to finally put them up was Bart’s.”

“And you believe that?” Mr. Nelson asked quietly.

“I do.”

Any urge he may have had to call her on her sudden conviction remained in check as he turned his attention to Lovey. “Your momma has always been a smart young lady. No reason to think anything different now.”

She hiked her legs up onto the couch and ran her finger along the throw pillow’s simple design. “Mr. Nelson?” she finally asked, looking up. “What can you tell me about Bart’s coin?”

Mr. Nelson’s hand stopped as he leaned his head against the back of his seat, a thoughtful smile claiming his lips. “He got it from his daddy. Who got it from a member of President Roosevelt’s Secret Service detail.”

“I remember something about a floral shop. Is that right?”

“Bart’s daddy was a florist. One of President Roosevelt’s Secret Service agents had a standing order for a floral delivery to his wife.” Mr. Nelson returned to petting Lovey, but his thoughts, his memories, were clearly somewhere else. “See? That’s why I never got married. I wouldn’t have thought of sending flowers every week.”

“You’d have thought of your own things.”

“Eh,” he said, waving her words away. “I’d have been no good at marriage.”

She opened her mouth to offer another protest but let it go. After all, what difference did it make? Mr. Nelson was set in his ways. “Tell me more.”

“Bart’s daddy filled that order faithfully for more than twenty years. Never forgot a one, from what Bart said.”

It was hard not to smile at that. Still, she wanted to hear more. “Okay . . .”

“In thanks for his daddy’s dedication, the agent gave him that gold double eagle coin.”

“It was made in 1934, right?”

“In 1933,” he corrected. “There were more than four hundred thousand of them made.”

She pulled the pillow from her chest and slowly turned it around in her hands, her mind working through Mr. Nelson’s words—words she’d heard many times from Bart yet wanted to commit to memory now. “Four hundred thousand sounds like a lot.”

“Because it is. Especially back in 1933.”

“So the fact that he got it from a member of the president’s Secret Service is what made it so special, right?”

Mr. Nelson looked at her across the coffee table, his head starting to shake before she’d even finished her question. “What made it special was the fact that none of those four hundred thousand coins were ever released to the public.”

“But why?” she asked, lowering the pillow to her lap.

“During the Depression, President Roosevelt decided to take America off the gold standard. When he did that, it became illegal to have any gold coins.”

“But this coin Bart’s dad was given was gold . . .”

“Indeed it was.”

“So that means it has to be really rare.”

Mr. Nelson slid his hands underneath Lovey, scooted the cat into the miniscule gap between his legs and the side of the chair, and then inched forward until he was ready to stand. Wrapping his hand around the top of the cane Bart hand carved for him years earlier, he rose to his feet and began his journey to the door. “Rare just like you, Winnie Girl.”

“I wish that were true.” She cringed at the woe-is-me tone of her voice, but before she could counteract it with a proper thank-you, he steadied himself with the edge of the now-open door and pointed the end of his cane at Winnie.

“You care about folks, Winnie Girl. Really care about ’em. Especially us old-timers. Most people your age wrote us off a long time ago. But not you. Can’t put a price on something that rare. Though, if you could, I’d pay it in a heartbeat.”

*   *   *

Winnie pushed the covers off to the side and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. Two hours of forcing her eyes closed, counting sheep (or, rather, raspberry mousse parfaits), and one-sided conversation with a cat who’d long since left the room was indication enough that sleep wasn’t going to be forthcoming anytime soon.

She could get a jump on the day’s baking. But there weren’t any orders yet.

She could track down Lovey and try to become friends, but exercises in futility had never been her forte.

She could turn on Mr. Nelson’s old tube television set and flip through the channels. But the last time she did that at three in the morning, she ended up buying a set of measuring cups that melted in the dishwasher.

The only thing left was the computer, which, unfortunately, meant dislodging Lovey from the chair on which she’d suddenly chosen (for the first time, mind you) to sleep away the wee hours of the morning.

Three hisses (and what sounded an awful lot like a growl) later, Winnie clicked the icon for solitaire and began to play. The first game, she won. The second game, she didn’t. Halfway through the third game, she switched over to the Internet. She checked Renee’s Facebook page (she’d posted a picture of Ty playing baseball) first, and then moved on to Bridget’s and the picture depicting the latest blanket the elderly woman had completed.

She contemplated updating her own page but discarded the idea when she realized she had nothing to say. Then, moving the cursor up to the search bar, she typed in Jay’s name. A dozen or so people with the same name popped up, but it took Winnie just seconds to locate the correct one thanks to the thumbnail-sized profile picture of the business teacher himself. She clicked on the tiny photo and instantly found herself staring at a larger version of the same picture—one that showed his smile and his eyes with such startling clarity she actually sucked in her breath.

For far longer than she knew she should, she studied his every feature, memorizing the curve of his face, the arch of his brow, the honest directness of his gaze. More than anything she wanted to know what he was doing at that moment (although sleeping was a good guess), but because they weren’t Internet friends, she couldn’t see anything beyond his picture.

Finally, she forced herself to log off her account. Next, she checked her Twitter account, scrolling through some of the tweets she’d missed over the last few weeks. A few pages in, she grew bored and abandoned her efforts. Her e-mail account yielded nothing capable of helping pass the time, and she closed out of that, too.

She was just about to shut down the computer and head back into her bedroom to count more parfaits, when she switched gears and typed “1933 gold double eagle coin” into her favorite search engine. Sure enough, more than ten pages of links popped up on her screen, and she clicked on the first one.

Two paragraphs in, she realized she knew everything there was to know, thanks to Mr. Nelson. Still, she checked the next link and the one after that, the same basic facts repeated again and again.

Halfway down the page of links, she clicked on one that mentioned value and began to read.

Currency can be traced back hundreds and hundreds of years. The older a coin is, the rarer it is. The rarer it is, the more coveted it is by collectors. Today, the most coveted coin—which recently sold for 7.5 million dollars—is the 1933 gold double eagle.

This time, when she sucked in her breath, the sound echoed around the room.

“Noooo . . .” Her gaze returned to the top of the article and quickly skipped ahead to the most important part.

Today, the most coveted coin—which recently sold for 7.5 million dollars—is the 1933 gold double eagle.

“Seven point five million dollars?” Covering her mouth with her hand, Winnie reread the sentence one more time, the third go-round kicking off a chill so powerful she actually began to shiver.