Chapter 2
The community center was a squat building with a fenced-off parking lot, which was surprisingly more than half-full of cars when we arrived at six-fifty-five. I got the box out of the back and followed Jessie up a cement ramp to the front door, which had a yellowed, handwritten sign in the window announcing the swap date and start time. A small table was set up in the middle of the foyer, manned by a pair of middle-aged women, and they greeted up with cheerful smiles.
“You two must be new,” the blonder of the two women said. “You have the wide-eyed look of newbies.”
“It is our first time,” Jessie replied with a familiar, disarming smile. “My friend Atticus here has recently come into a big collection of puzzles, and we hope they’ll find some good use here at your puzzle swap.”
“Oh my, that’s a big box.” The woman rose, as if she could see through the box’s lid by standing up. “Typically, we run a one-to-one swap with puzzles. You bring one to trade, and you take one home. Are you looking to take this many home?”
“Fu—uh, heck no,” I said. “I just want to give these away. The community center seemed like a better place than, um, the dump.”
“Oh, no, please don’t throw them away,” the second woman said, also standing, her voice as raspy as sandpaper. “Even if they don’t all get swapped tonight, we can find them good homes.”
“Oh, great, that’s what I want.” The door opened behind us, letting in a blast of hot air, and I sensed someone coming inside before I turned around, not wanting to block the entrance.
An elderly man leaning on a walker came in first, followed immediately by the cutest guy I’d seen in person since college. Younger, probably twenties, tall and slender, with dark brown hair twisted into dozens of braids, more than I’d ever seen on a guy before. His braids were pulled back and held there by a green scarf, and he eyeballed me with open suspicion before his expression settled.
“Oh, Trace!” Blonde Lady said in a newly-chirpy tone. “Perfect timing. This lovely young couple is new to the swap, and they have a whole box of puzzles to give away. Can you and Gerald show them where the table is?”
Trace blinked several times, probably thrown by being volunteered on the spot, and then smiled. “Of course, Dottie. Always nice to see new faces.” Something in his eyes suggested otherwise, and despite his hotness, this Trace guy wasn’t impressing me with his attitude.
He gave us a wide berth as he circled the table and headed for another propped-open door. I let Jessie go first, while Gerald brought up the rear. Through the door was a large auditorium with a scuffed wooden floor, a stage directly ahead, and rolled up mats against a wall, as well as stacks of chairs and folding tables. Someone had set up a small coffee station, complete with two white boxes of pastries, About a dozen rectangular tables and chairs littered the front half of the space, many of them occupied by wrinkled faces and gray hair.
Trace went to the only round table in the center of the others, where a small pile of puzzles already waited for more to join them. “You can add your puzzles here,” he said. “If you want to take a puzzle, that isn’t until seven-thirty, so help yourself to refreshments.”
“We’re just here to donate,” I replied. “I have hundreds of puzzles at home, so I don’t need more.”
“Hoarder?”
“Reseller.” I didn’t usually introduce myself as a reseller this early in a conversation, because sometimes folks got weird about it. Like I was immediately looking to get something out of them, or to cheat them somehow. But the topic had come up, and I didn’t want to lie to a new acquaintance.
“So you’re giving away your garbage?”
The soft, almost too-innocent way he spoke sent my hackles right up. “I don’t pawn my garbage off on other people, dude. I have way too many to try and resell them all, and Jessie thought this was a good place to bring some. That’s it.”
The guy—what was his name? Travis?—slow-blinked at me, then cracked a smile. “I believe you. Sorry, guy, I just hate the way some people think the less fortunate or the elderly will take any old garbage that rich folks will toss at them.”
I nearly choked on laughter. “I am not rich by any stretch. I don’t want to insult anyone, either, just give a gift.”
“His name is Atticus, by the way,” Jessie said, inserting herself into our conversation. Gerald had already wandered off to sit at a table. “But we all call him Atty. I’m his BFF, Jessie, and we aren’t a couple. What was your name again?”
I tried to glare at Jessie, but she only had eyes for the hottie. I knew this maneuver.
“My name’s Trace Johnson,” he replied. “Nice to meet you both.”
“Likewise.” Jessie pretended to see something on her phone. “Since the puzzle swap doesn’t happen for, like, thirty minutes, why don’t you two go sit and talk? I need to check a message.” She marched across the auditorium, tapping away at her phone.
Trace shook his head then angled toward me, his body language more open than before. He had at least six inches of height on me, maybe more, and I could have sworn ink peeked out around his shirt sleeves. “Why do I feel like there will be repercussions if we don’t do what Jessie said?”
I snorted. “Good call. Um, buy you a cup of coffee?”
“The coffee here is free.”
“I know. I, uh, it was a…um.” Major fail.
Trace smiled. “I know what you meant. We can get coffee and chat, if you want?”
“Sure! Um, yes, let’s get coffee. Do you need to keep an eye on Gerald, though?”
“Gerald? Why?” Trace glanced around until he spotted the man. “He seems fine.”
“You aren’t here with him?”
“He’s a little old for me, Atticus.”
The complete dead-pan delivery made me snort again. “I didn’t mean as a date.” Yeesh, I was really out of practice at this. Going to a bar required alcohol, dancing, and maybe some info swaps later, but not this level of conversation. Especially sober conversation.
“I know, I know, you’re too easy,” Trace replied. “No, we just happened to arrive at the same time. I held the door for him.”
“Oh. Then why are you here?” Boy, that had sounded rude. “Not that you aren’t allowed to come to a public puzzle swap, but, I mean, are you into puzzles?”
“Human puzzles.”
I blinked, unsure if he was being serious or joking. The guy could be a psych major. I’d met enough pretentious college students who loved showing off the latest thing they’d read for class, even if the person they were talking to didn’t want to be psycho-analyzed. But Trace had a different vibe from those guys. Less ready to attack the world with his big brain, and more weary of trying to survive day to day.
Thankfully, Trace saw me struggling with his response and gave me more. “I used to come here every week as part of my community service hours.” Firm, almost challenging me to make a big deal out of it. “Now, coming back is a habit I can’t break, but it’s a good habit. Everyone here has a story, and most will talk to you or anyone else who will listen to them.” He gazed around the auditorium. “Sometimes we just need someone to listen.”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t patronizing him, either. I understood that from my own business. People loved to talk, especially about themselves and their own lives and tragedies, and sometimes a good story helped sell an item faster than a cheap price tag.
Trace admitting to doing community service also dinged my curiosity bell hard. He was too old to be earning a Boy Scouts badge, and had the look of someone who’d probably been sentenced to those hours. But I had enough tact not to bring it up. And as if reading my mind, Trace said, “I bet in your line of work, you know all about talkative people.”
I chuckled and nodded toward the coffee area. “You have no idea. Thirsty?”
“Coffee, yeah.”
We joined the short line for the two large coffee dispensers. The setup was basic with foam cups, a choice of sugar or blue generic sweetener packets, powdered non-dairy creamer, or a carafe of half-and-half. I took mine black, which had been an acquired taste born of necessity. Sometimes I was too busy to bother with sugar or cream.
Trace added sugar and half-and-half to his, turning the cup nearly white, and I’d bet money he was used to grande, double-foam macchiato concoctions. I followed him to a spot by the wall, not too far from the tables of waiting puzzle swappers, but private enough to keep talking.
“So how did you end up with these hundreds of spare puzzles?” Trace asked then blew over the top of his steaming coffee. “You said you’re a reseller, but I can’t imagine used puzzles are in high demand.”
“Some puzzles can be valuable, especially if you find something that’s media-related and complete, like Masters of the Universe from the eighties. I found one of those once for a buck at a yard sale and resold it for thirty, but I don’t typically buy puzzles. Counting them is a pain in the ass, and even if you count three hundred pieces, there’s no guarantee they complete that picture unless you put the puzzle together yourself.”
Trace nodded along, his lips quirking over the rim of his foam cup. “If they’re so much trouble, then why do you have so many to donate to our quaint, neighborhood puzzle swap?”
Oh, yeah, I hadn’t answered his question. Babble brain took over sometimes when people asked about my job. I loved what I did and enjoyed sharing random information with people. “I bought a storage unit at auction, and the puzzles were only a fraction of what I found inside.”
“You said you had hundreds.”
“I do. It was a packed unit. I bought it a few weeks ago, and it takes a while to get through the entire thing. I have to move everything to my storage area, sort it, organize it, decide what I can sell, give stuff to Jessie in exchange for labor. It’s a process.”
“So Jessie isn’t your partner?”
“Nah, best friend.” I described her boutique in greater detail than necessary, especially when Jessie herself was likely to reappear at any moment and promote her store herself. “She helps me empty and haul storage units, in exchange for first dibs on any clothes or purses I come across.”
“Not a fan?”
“No, I hate dealing with most clothes, and I avoid them as much as I can, and when I can’t, I pawn it off on other people.”
“Kind of like puzzles?”
“Pretty much. I know a little about a lot, a lot about a little, and everything else I research as I go.” It hit me that I’d been talking for the better part of the last ten minutes, with Trace only asking the occasional question. He was learning truckloads about me, and I still knew little about him. “So, Trace, what do you do when you’re not attending weeknight puzzle swaps with the elderly?”
His dark eyes seemed to twinkle, and he finally smiled. A real smile that he needed to make more often. “I’m a barista.”
Of course, someone so young and pretty was a barista. “Starbucks?”
“Fuck, no, at a little place called Half-Dozen. It’s owned by two guys who met at a bar, ended up best friends, and now have a business together. It’s a great place, the coffee is amazing because Ezra is a huge coffee snob, and all the muffins are homemade same-day. Plus, the owners are both big on second chances. And they’re right next door to a used bookstore, so you’ve got coffee, books and pastries in one building. The hours are great, and it’s full time, but it also leaves my evenings pretty empty, so I have to find other things to keep me busy. Hence still coming to the puzzle swap when I don’t have to.”
This was the most animated and excited Trace had been so far in our conversation, nattering on the same way I had about my work and Jessie’s boutique. Needing to fill in his lonely evening hours was a refrain I’d heard before, usually from people who’d given up a hard-partying lifestyle for something a lot more sober. Combined with the comment about community service, I couldn’t help wondering if Trace was in recovery.
“I’ve heard other people mention Half-Dozen, but I’ve never been there,” I admitted. “Is the coffee worth the trip?”
“Absolutely, especially if you’re familiar with that side of town.” He mentioned the neighborhood.
“I definitely am. It’s not that far from a bar I like.” He’d gently dropped the knowledge that Half-Dozen was owned by two guys who met in a bar, and it was well-known bar lore that Ezra Kelley and Alessandro Silva had met at Pot O Gold, and then opened a coffee shop together. Time to put it out there and see if Trace’s interest was dinging my gaydar correctly. “Pot O Gold. Have you heard of it?”
Trace’s smile tightened a fraction. “I know it. It’s been a few years since I’ve gone inside. I order the food for delivery sometimes, but the bar scene isn’t really my thing anymore. A little too much…temptation.”
He held eye contact longer than a straight guy would, and my chest warmed with interest. It had been ages since someone as handsome and hip as Trace Johnson had showed the slightest interest in me, and I wasn’t going to fumble this chance.
Jessie would never let me hear the end of it if I didn’t at least make the play.
“So where do you go to meet people?” I asked, leaning more directly into his personal space. “Besides puzzle swaps?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Book club meetings, Sunday School, picnic days at the Brandywine Zoo.” He laughed, a soft rolling sound that rippled over my skin. “I’m a barista, remember? I meet people all day long.”
“So management doesn’t frown on you dating the guests?”
The instant Trace’s smile flattened, I knew I’d stepped in something, and the easy conversation between us screeched to a painful halt. “I mean, there’s no set rule, but dating is complicated for me.”
“Because you’re an addict?” Shit, fuck and hell, I hadn’t meant to let that slip out of my stupid-ass mouth.
Trace frowned and took a single step backward, putting a chasm of distance between us now, when we’d been getting so damned cozy a moment ago. He looked more annoyed than embarrassed, but I’d also known the guy for twenty-odd minutes, and I wasn’t an expert on his expressions.
Thankfully, Dottie put me out of my misery by clapping her hands and asking for silence. I spotted her by the puzzle table, along with the other lady from the entrance. Jessie was striding toward me, phone in hand, and when I turned to try and fix what I’d broken with Trace…he was gone.
Well, hell.
I spent the next two weeks working around my puzzle pile, mostly so I didn’t remind myself of how spectacularly I’d blown it flirting with Trace, and I had plenty to keep me busy in the meantime. The remnants of that storage locker ended up sorted for online listings, allocated for a future yard sale, or piled into the back of my van for a donation to All Saints Thrift Store, which happened on a Thursday morning. Doris and Raymond Burke were thrilled with everything I brought them—or they were really good at faking it, but who didn’t like free merchandise for their mom-and-pop store?—and I was happy to help fill their stock room with inventory. And get my receipt for taxes.
But when I returned to my garage after lunch, the puzzle mountain mocked me from the corner where I’d shoved it, and I couldn’t put it off any longer. I also really wanted to talk to Trace again, maybe apologize for being so rude two weeks ago, but tracking him down at his coffee shop felt way too stalkerish. Who did that? Even if it was a public business and wouldn’t be weird for me to go in and order coffee…nah.
So I grabbed a random box of puzzles, shoved it into my van, and at six-thirty that evening, headed for the community center. Alone this time, because I did not need Jessie pestering me about being hung up on a guy I’d known for half-an-hour. A hot, intriguing barista with a lot of secrets behind his devilish smile.
Dottie greeted me with a hug I didn’t expect. “It’s so nice to see new people coming back to these events,” she said, “and with more puzzles! Last week, the regulars raved about some of yours. Darlene said the one she chose reminded her of a puzzle she used to love doing as a little girl. The picture on it, I mean. It wasn’t the same puzzle, because yours aren’t that old.”
I blinked dumbly. “Wow. Um, I’m glad it made Darlene happy. I’ll just, uh, put these on the swap table?”
“Go right ahead, hon.”
The auditorium was mostly empty, since I’d gotten there a little too early thanks to light traffic. I glanced around while I stacked the new puzzles on the swap table. Didn’t want to be too obvious that I was looking for someone, or appear as though I was casing the place, and I didn’t see?—
“Hey, Atticus.”
Trace’s voice directly behind me nearly sent me out of my sneakers. I spun around, heart slamming into my ribcage, and my pulse jumped with happiness at the sight of Trace, smiling at me like he’d been handed a million dollars. “Hey, Trace,” I said, all thoughts of apologizing tumbling out of my brain.
“When I didn’t see you here last week, I figured you weren’t coming back.” His tone was a funny mix of excited and annoyed, and I couldn’t figure out why. He’s the one who’d ghosted me.
“I had more puzzles.” Cue more dumb, obvious statements. “How about you?” Idiot! I knew this.
“Habit.” Trace tilted his head toward the far wall, away from the coffee table. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Um, yeah.” Had I stepped into an alternate reality where our first conversation hadn’t ended awkwardly and abruptly two weeks ago? What the heck? Curious and confused, I followed him to a quiet spot by a stack of plastic chairs. “What’s up?”
“When I got here last week, Gerald approached me. He said he took one of your puzzles home and found a letter in it. Wanted me to give it back to you in case you’d lost it. But since it was in the box, I figured it wasn’t yours, and I read it, and it was fascinating, and I really want to read more, if you have more letters.”
“Huh?” As intelligent responses went, that rose to the level of driveway gravel, but I was confused. Trace wanted more letters that Gerald found in one of my donated puzzles? “Wait, is finding a letter a metaphor for something?”
“No, it’s very literal. The letter was postmarked January ‘87, and it was written on lined notebook paper, in cursive, so it took me a while to decipher it, but the contents…” He gnawed briefly on his lower lip. “I’m sure it sounds nuts, but I really want to know more about the people in the letter.”
My brain was finally catching up with the conversation. Personal mail and papers were not uncommon finds in storage lockers, and the tote I’d found in this one was waiting to go through my shredder. I rarely took the time to open cards or envelopes, unless they were obviously vintage. Old greeting cards were valuable to the right collectors.
But unless one of those letters had a bunch of hundred dollar bills in it, I wasn’t likely to find valuables inside forty-year-old jigsaw puzzles. “Okay,” was all I could stumble out.
Trace’s eyebrows furrowed. “Did you give the rest of your stash away? Are they all gone?”
“No. I brought another box tonight, but the rest are still in my garage.”
“Great. Come with me.” He looped his hand around my elbow and guided me back to the puzzle table, where he began to gently shake the stack I’d brought. One by one. I stood there, face hot, imagining every pair of eyeballs in the auditorium was staring at us in confusion, but too embarrassed to look around and check.
One box sounded less full than the others. Trace opened the lid, reached inside, and produced a thick, standard-sized envelope, and tucked it under his armpit. He found two more letters in puzzles, and then he whisked me back to our spot. The auditorium was filling up with puzzle swappers, but when I did nervously glance around, no one was paying us any attention. Maybe Trace always acted a bit erratically and they were used to it?
Trace looked at the front of each envelope and I tried to peer over his shoulder. Both addresses were blacked out but the postmarks all said ’87. He slid a fingertip over the illegible addressee’s name. “If there’s three here, then I bet there’s more in the others.”
“Probably.” Before I could think through the intelligence of it, I said, “Come over to my garage. We can go through the others, look for more letters. I think I have some old paperwork, too, that was in with the other stuff I bought.”
“Yeah?” His dark eyes glimmered, and I loved that I’d put that positive emotion there. “When?”
“Um, whenever.”
“Tomorrow? I work until four.”
My morning was jammed with appointments, but I could swing that. “Yeah, I can meet you at my place around four-thirty?”
“Okay. Sweet. Give me your phone. I’ll put in my number so you can text me the address.”
I handed over my phone without much thought, reacting to his gently issued orders and texting my address to a near-stranger, so he could come into my private workspace. I almost never invited anyone over, not even potential clients. We generally met in public places. No one needed to see how much merchandise I had on hand. Despite a good alarm system on both the house and garage, I didn’t trust people, as a general rule.
But I was inviting Trace over to root through puzzles for old letters he found fascinating. “So what exactly was in the first letter that made you want to read more?” I asked while Trace fiddled with his own phone.
“A piece of a larger puzzle.”
“What?”
Trace pocketed his phone and smiled, but something still lurked in his eyes. Something intriguing I needed to know more about. Much like I needed to know more about the people in those letters. “Tell you what,” Trace said. “Give me two hours of your time tomorrow to find more letters. If you look at what I’ve found and aren’t equally interested in knowing the whole story, then I’ll buy the puzzles off you and haul them away myself. Take them all off your hands.”
“You’d do that just to find someone else’s old letters?”
“Yes.”
Two hours of my time to have someone else sort through that mountain of puzzles, while I watched (maybe participated), and a chance to get to know more about the mysterious Trace Johnson? To understand why these letters had him so invested that he’d promised to buy the whole lot off me if I wasn’t impressed by his findings? Win-win.
“Okay, two hours tomorrow, starting at four-thirty,” I said. “You aren’t going to give me a hint? Let me read one of the letters tonight?”
“You got a hint. 1987.”
“What am I supposed to know about ’87? I was a year old.”
“It gave us the Frog brothers.”
“Was that a country band?”
Trace laughed, the musical sound bouncing around the room despite the droning chatter all around us. “You’ve never seen The Lost Boys ? It’s a classic.”
“Wait, that’s a vampire movie, right? I’m not really into that kind of thing.”
“What kind of movies do you like?”
“Action. Comedies. Mindless stuff. I don’t honestly watch a lot of movies. If I’m not working, I’m probably vegging out with video games or true crime podcasts.”
“True crime.” Trace cocked his hip slightly, angling his body toward mine. I was no pro, but I was pretty sure he was subtly flirting now. “So you like to gather clues and investigate things? I bet it comes in handy with your day job.”
“It does, and I see what you did there.” I pointed at the letters in his hand. “You’ve got the clues. I’ve got the puzzles. Tomorrow, we start our investigation and put things together.”
“Yes, we do, Atticus. It’s a date.”
A date.
No, it wasn’t a real date, but I’ll be damned if my body didn’t know it wasn’t. From the moment I woke up Friday morning, my stomach was in knots, and it remained tangled up and boiling with acid all day, while I got through my other business. Then I spent way too much time worrying about the state of my garage, allowing my anxiety to spike so hard I actually swept the damned floor twice.
By the time four-thirty finally rolled around, I had the air conditioner blasting at Arctic temperatures, I’d changed my shirt twice, and I felt like a wreck. But when I investigated the rumble of a car engine outside, the sight of Trace unfolding his long, lean body from the driver’s side of his two-door sedan turned that wormy anxiety into nervous anticipation. We’d definitely flirted last night, he was here at my private residence, and I really hoped we both got something great out of tonight’s puzzle hunt.
Trace leaned inside his car, and straightened back up with a brown coffee cup in each hand. I couldn’t stop staring at them as he strode across the gravel to where I stood in the open side door, conditioned air circling around my ankles while the summer humidity blasted my face and chest.
Hot coffee in this heat? Was he nuts?
“Brought you a black coffee,” Trace said once he was close enough to hold it out. “You didn’t put anything in yours the other night.”
The other night had been two weeks ago. Trace remembered such a small detail from that far back? The kindness was ten kinds of endearing. “Thank you.” I accepted the coffee, careful to hold it around the cardboard sleeve. “I appreciate the caffeine jolt. It’s been a long day.”
“Same here, but I’m pretty used to early mornings and long days. But the owners are great about allowing employees to help themselves to the drip coffee while we’re working.”
“Just the hot or the iced, too?”
Trace’s smile drooped. “Shit, is it hot in your garage? I didn’t even think about iced coffee.”
“It’s fine, I have an air conditioning unit for the garage. I do a lot of work out here, and I’d melt in the summer without it. Come inside, please.” I stepped in and gave Trace room to enter.
He gazed around the space, taking in the rows of sturdy metal shelves and assortment of both cardboard banker boxes and heavy-duty plastic totes. Most of the overhead lights were on, giving us plenty of illumination. I had no idea what it looked like to a stranger, because to me it was just…my workspace.