“You went to law school?” Evie hadn’t meant it to come out sounding quite so incredulous.

“Columbia Law, class of ’04. Michael Finneas Ryan, J.D., at your service.” He took a little bow. “Another lifetime. Different things mattered to me back then.” He stared out into space. “I remember that day like it was yesterday. We could see the smoke all the way from the fifth-floor classroom window up at 116th Street.” He sighed and shook his head. “A group of us trooped over to St. Luke’s, right from class, and tried to give blood.”

Evie and her friends had gone to St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village. They’d been turned away.

“What about you?” he asked.

“In the dorm at NYU.” Her mother’s phone call had woken her up. She almost hadn’t answered because she hadn’t wanted her mother to know she was skipping her nine o’clock class.

Are you all right? Then, Turn on the TV.

Later, Evie had wandered out into the acrid haze, through drifts of paper that turned lower Manhattan into a perverted snow globe.

Finn took a long pull on the beer, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Listen,” he said, “was I kind of arrogant when you first came into the store? I tend to be a bit judgmental.” He tilted his head and smiled. “My ex-girlfriend called it something else.”

“I didn’t notice,” Evie said. She had noticed, though, Finn’s casual drop of the “ex-girlfriend.”

“Ha, ha. Like hell you didn’t. I thought maybe that’s why you were so . . . quiet when you came in again.”

Arrogant and judgmental sure, but also perceptive. “No. Sorry. It had nothing to do with you.” She straightened her father’s picture under the refrigerator magnet. “So, tell me about Soundview Lagoons.”

“You really want to hear? Or are you changing the subject?”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “Soundview Lagoons. Well, they are pretty amazing. At low tide, they’re transformed into seven acres of mudflat, home to great blue herons, great egrets, blue and fiddler crabs, eastern mud snails, blue-finger mud and hermit crabs, and the ribbed mussel. And it’s no joke what’s happening around here. Most people could give a rat’s ass whether the eel grass comes back. They couldn’t care less about what happens to salt-marsh sharp-tailed sparrows and clapper rails.”

“I confess, I don’t know a sparrow from a clapper rail.”

“A clapper rail is the size of a chicken. Long orange bill. Whitish rump. It’s all about whether you decide you’re going to pay attention.”

Evie did a double take. That was something she’d often said herself, that preserving history was about deciding to pay attention.

“I’ve seen old postcards of Higgs Point,” she said. “There was a ferry landing, beaches, a casino, all of them long gone. Wasn’t there an amusement park, too?”

“Snakapins Park. My family owned it.”

“Snakapins?”

“It’s an Algonquin word. Means ‘land between two waters.’ ”

Evie smiled. Leave it to the Algonquin—or the Siwanoy if she remembered her history of the boroughs correctly—to come up with such an evocative name for the place that white men named the far more pedestrian Higgs Point. “And your . . . grandfather borrowed the word for his amusement park?”

“Great-grandfather. His parents used to come over from Queens and camp out by the water. Hard to believe, looking at it now. Anyway, he loved it so much that he bought up what was mostly farmland and swamp. Built the amusement park. The store used to be one of the main buildings. You wouldn’t believe the old crap that’s still in the basement.”

Evie’s heart skipped a beat. “Old crap?”

He grinned. “You like old crap?”

“Of course. It’s what I do. I’m a curator at the Five-Boroughs Historical Society.”

“Really?” He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at her. “I didn’t know that.”

Evie felt herself flush. “You never asked.”

“My ex-girlfriend accused me of that, too. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. So tell me about what’s in the basement of the store?”

“All kinds of stuff. It’s been moldering down there since the place closed down in the twenties. There’s even parts from some of the old rides. Junk, really.”

Junk? That depended entirely on who was looking at it. Evie opened her mouth to explain about her job, and that preserving pieces from the past was something she cared passionately about. But instead, all that came out was a huge yawn.

Finn laughed, reached out for her hand, and pulled her to her feet. He was so close she could smell beer and sawdust and maybe a whiff of turpentine. He put his hands around her waist.

Too fast. The thought was like an alarm going off in her head. But before she could react, he’d released her.

“You need sleep,” he said. He walked his empty beer bottle to the kitchen sink, reached across, and tugged the curtains closed.

Evie followed, unsteady on her feet. Even a single beer made her tipsy?

“Thanks. For everything,” she said.

“No big deal. I won’t forget about the front steps and the leak. Anything else you need?”

“Actually, there is something. That old gas pump outside the store? It doesn’t still pump gas by any chance?”

“The EPA would have my head on a platter if it did. Do you need gas?”

“My mother’s car won’t start, and I’m hoping it’s only out of gas.”

“I’ve got a can of gas in the back of my truck. Enough to get you to a service station, anyway. I’ll bring it over tomorrow. Around ten? After our morning rush.”

“That’s perfect. Thanks. I’ll be here.”

“It’s okay if you’re not. I’ve got a key to the garage.” Evie’s surprise must have shown on her face because he added, “Your mother has us leave deliveries there.”

“Really?” She wondered if her mother’s deliveries had included cases of cigarette cartons. She could understand her mother not wanting them deposited at her front door.

“Well,” he said, taking a step closer. She could feel his body heat. “Guess I better go.”

“Thanks for the beer.”

“Thanks for the company.” He put his finger under her chin and raised her face to his. Her heart felt like it was pounding a mile a minute, but before she could decide whether she wanted to kiss him or not, he kissed her on the nose and headed for the door.

“Don’t forget to lock up,” he shot over his shoulder. “Sleep tight. See you in the morning.”

The instant he was gone, she realized that she did want to kiss him. Wanted to be kissed. But she was also desperately tired and glad he’d known not to press his advantage.

Evie cleared a space in the living room for a twin mattress she dragged down from the upstairs bedroom. The sheets already on it were clean, despite the squirrels. She’d meant to call Ginger and tell her about the envelopes of cash, but it was much too late. Tomorrow. First thing.

She got the money out of the refrigerator and slid it under the mattress, then changed into an oversize T-shirt, brushed her teeth, and got into bed. Before she closed her eyes she took a minute to contemplate the mess that still surrounded her. Why had her mother even bothered to drag in broken aluminum lawn chairs? Had it been drunken inspiration? And had she done that before or after she got the flat-screen TV?

Evie rubbed her nose. She could still feel Finn’s lips. Five minutes later, she was sound asleep.

Chapter Nineteen

The sound track of Mina’s dreams that night was the roar of heavy equipment. She saw herself standing helplessly across the street as a wrecking ball slammed, over and over, into the front of her house. She could hear poor Ivory meowing and see a skeletal Angela Quintanilla rapping at the front window, both of them trapped inside.

She woke up, drenched in sweat, to find that Ivory really was mewing and rattling the closed bedroom door. This was Ivory’s morning routine, sticking her paw under the door and trying to pull it open. Mina had done everything she could think of to discourage her. Quiet would reign again only after the cat had been fed.