For the first time since meeting him, Sarah arrived at a rally point before Finch—a small feat for which she felt extremely grateful. It meant she had the chance to sort through some of her feelings before the two of them finally came face-to-face.

She’d thought long and hard about her talk with Carol, about when you knew the feelings really meant something. Not just about how they applied to Finch, but rather everything in life.

She cared about few things enough to form strong feelings in either direction. Everything in her life was simply okay.

None of it stood out.

None of it left a mark.

But with Finch, she felt like she might want something deeper, stronger, and that terrified her. Hopefully their time apart had put things into perspective for both of them. She wanted to give Finch another chance, but it would be too hard to sort through their feelings for each other while also trying to unravel Eleanor’s mystery.

One thing at a time.

She took a seat on a mossy stone bench beneath the shade of a thick tree. The bench appeared as if it had been there for ages—almost as if it had become a part of the larger oak beside it—and she wondered if both of them pre-dated the college. What had this place been before? Was it better now, or did the modern new campus displace something beautiful?

How could you ever really know if change would be wonderful or tragic?

This line of thinking terrified Sarah.

Here she stood at the edge of one of life’s giant cliffs. She could leap, possibly fly. Or she could delay, lose her footing, and fall.

Was standing still even an option? Could it ever be again?

Something had changed inside her, and she still didn’t know what it might be. Whether it was safe, whether she was worthy to hope, to trust, to love…

Her phone pinged with a message from Finch: Stuck in traffic. Be there in 5.

She smiled to herself. So her perpetually punctual partner in crime wasn’t infallible after all. Somehow that made her feel better, as if things had changed for him, too. Maybe those changes would help them fit together better… or maybe it would mean they’d have an easier time moving apart and getting on with their respective lives.

A fat squirrel ran down the tree and scampered up to Sarah, sitting only a few feet away as his little nose and whiskers twitched. These college campus squirrels were quite bold. She almost never saw the animals elsewhere. Few were brave enough to approach a dog…

Except Lucky wasn’t there.

She’d been in such a hurry to get to the college and move forward with the mystery—and, okay, to see Finch again—that she hadn’t remembered to bring him.

How was that possible? She brought him everywhere. Why was this outing any different?

“Hey there, stranger,” Finch said, appearing suddenly and sinking beside her on the worn bench.

Sarah practically jumped out of her skin. “You scared me!”

“Sorry, I came up from behind. The front lot was full… Hey, where’s Lucky?”

“At home. Not allowed in the college.” For some reason, she didn’t want him to know she’d been so excited to come here with them that she’d forgotten her constant companion and broken her own rule about them spending time together only when chaperoned by the dog.

“Ahh, bummer. Well, it sure is good to see you again.” Finch placed his hand on the bench between them and edged his pinky toward hers, perhaps checking to see what level of contact between them was okay now. Sarah almost let him grab her hand, lace his fingers between his own.

One thing at a time!

She shot to her feet, anxiously tucking a strand of hair behind each ear. “Let’s get going!” she said, hating the false cheeriness in her voice.

Just as she’d feared, seeing Finch again brought all the same feelings flooding back so fast it was impossible to dam them up. Too late. The damage was done.

She couldn’t reverse time, but there was still so much she had to figure out about herself before she could figure out where things stood with them.

Somehow solving Eleanor’s mystery had become tantamount to resolving all the other lingering questions in her life—where Finch fit in. Whether they could possibly share a future.

Well, she could figure those answers out later.

“Are we even going to be able to get in?” Finch asked as they walked uphill toward the campus library. The sun hung high in the sky, not a cloud to be seen. It was truly the perfect day, making him wish he could invite Sarah to run away with him to the beach.

Putting pressure on her, though, would only increase her skittishness with him. It seemed every single time the two of them got together, her heart had been reset and he needed to earn her trust all over again.

They needed to stop coming up with excuses, stop saying goodbye. And as much as he despised his great-aunt, he now wanted nothing more than to solve her mystery. Doing so was the only way he’d get even the whisper of a chance with the most perfect woman he’d ever met.

When they reached the library, Sarah strode in confidently without waiting for him to hold the door for her. So much for chivalry.

“See?” she said with a small smile of triumph. “Easy peasy.”

He couldn’t remember where they’d left the conversation and what she meant, but he liked that it had made her smile. “How are we going to access the archives?” he asked, glancing around the bustling space.

Sarah reached into her pocket and pulled out a worn plastic card. “I took a class here last year. Still have my student login.”

“I thought you finished school back east,” Finch asked, raising an eyebrow in her direction. There was still so much about this woman he didn’t know—so much he longed to discover.

“I did, but this was just an enrichment class, something fun to do after hours.”

“Really? What did you take?”

Sarah shrugged as if her answer didn’t matter, as if she wasn’t the most interesting person he’d ever met. “My patients talk about the wars a lot, so I wanted to know more. That’s all.”

“You really go the extra mile for all of them,” Finch said, placing a cautious hand on her arm. “It’s not just Eleanor.”

Sarah shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, looking away as she spoke. “I like giving them a friend when they don’t really have much of anyone left. It’s about respect and human decency more than anything.”

“Well, I think it’s incredible.”

“Uhh, thanks.” She attempted a smile, but still looked so sad. Why couldn’t she take his compliments?

“Anyway,” Sarah continued, obviously eager to get back on task. “We should be able to access the local paper archives through the digitized collections. If not, we can ask to see the microfiche.”

“Was it really just one class you took? You kind of seem like a pro here.”

“Two or three in history. A couple more in other disciplines.”

“What oth—?”

“Nope, we’re not going to talk about me,” she said, already walking away from him. “We’re going to figure out what your aunt wants us to know. To the computers!”

Finch brought a hand to his mouth to cover his laugh. Sarah was like a dog with a rope toy—irresistibly adorable and also crazy stubborn. He trailed after her toward the nearby bank of computers and pulled up a chair to watch over her shoulder as she deftly logged in and navigated the school intranet.

“Here it is,” she announced proudly, hovering her cursor over something called The Gold Coast Collection. “This has most of the area newspapers up until like 2010 and back to 1800-something. We should be able to find something to help here.”

Her hands lingered over the keyboard for a few moments before she turned toward him and asked, “What should I search first?”

“Try the St. Mary’s Murder.”

Sarah nodded. “Got it.”

Finch smiled to himself as Sarah used each of her index fingers to type in the search terms. It seemed she had more in common with her elderly patients than even she realized.

“Oh my gosh, there are dozens!” Sarah cried as she scrolled down the page studying the array of headlines. She read the first couple, which largely rehashed what they already knew.

Finch had a hard time reading over her shoulder and longed to lean in closer, but he wanted Sarah to feel comfortable. He wanted her to be able to solve this mystery since it clearly meant so much to her… even beyond helping Eleanor. And far more than he could understand.

“Hey,” he interrupted, “why don’t you log me in over here so we can divide and conquer?”

“Ooh, good idea! You take this one and keep reading. I’ll boot up the other and start reading the results from the bottom.” She came alive again now that she had something to focus on other than Finch. He wished she would be like this always, but getting to know each other better had made her more uncomfortable around him, not less. He needed to find a way to fix that…

They worked beside each other for the next hour or so, occasionally sharing little tidbits with one another. Ultimately, they reached the end of the results without finding any smoking gun to help solve their mystery.

Sarah’s face fell. “Maybe it really is hopeless.”

“Don’t say that. We’re just getting started. Besides you’re with a tech genius, remember?” He flashed one of his famous smiles her way. His mother had always said he could sell water to a fish with that smile, and it seemed to work now. Sarah softened right before his eyes.

“So now you’re a genius, are you?” she asked playfully.

“Just when it comes to Google and stuff.”

“But this isn’t Google,” she said with a laugh. “It’s the Gold Coast Collection.”

“Yeah, yeah, but it works pretty much the same, right?” He typed in Eleanor’s name demonstratively. “We just need to figure out the perfect search term, and—”

“Finch, look!” Sarah put both her hands on the back of his chair and leaned over his shoulder to get a closer look at the screen.

When he turned, he saw that his throwaway search had resulted in a single result titled Letter to the Editor. “Wasn’t ‘editor’ one of the words on that nonsense jumbled list?” he asked, hardly able to believe their dumb luck.

Her eyes shone with anticipation. It was the happiest he had ever seen her… Well, other than right before their almost kiss at the zip line.

“Here,” she said, unfolding the list after she removed it from her purse and pointing to the part that read:

Dying of curiosity now that they finally had a lead, Finch clicked on the result and began reading:

Sarah interrupted him by squeezing down on his shoulders before he could read any farther. “Finch!” she cried. “Look at the date!”

He re-read the last part. “February 29, 1957. Yeah, so?”

She sighed and pulled the paper from Eleanor out of her pocket again. “Look at this. Really look at it,” she said, thrusting it at him.

He read through the list slowly, carefully, and still at a loss.

She signed again and pointed to the word “editor” in the list, and then the string of numbers that came immediately after it. “See, it starts 29-02-57. That could mean the twenty-ninth of February 1957.”

Sarah paused, apparently waiting for him to connect the dots. When he didn’t, she rolled her eyes, let out a huff, and continued, “Which was the publication date of the article referenced in her letter to the editor. Don’t you see? That can’t be a coincidence!”

“Then what do the rest of the numbers mean. 12-93-12-49-39-42…”

“I don’t know. Keep reading,” she urged him.

He nodded and read the rest of the letter aloud, wondering what else they were about to discover: