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knew of. I had no answer to Will’s question.
    Gracie had gone pale, so I pushed the thought of murders and motives out of my mind and turned to her. “You’d love this old dressing gown I saw yesterday.” I ushered her toward the stairs, gritting my teeth against the stiffness in my body and the sore spots where bruises ran up and down my side, using the handrail to climb up behind her.
    Will was suddenly right beside me, his hand on my lower back. “Cassidy,” he said softly, “you sure you want to go up there after what happened yesterday?”
    “I’m not going onto the widow’s walk. I’ll never trust another railing,” I said lightly, trying to make it sound like a joke. But it came off tinged with fear, and I wondered how much truth was behind the words.
    As I blinked, I suddenly saw myself on the widow’s walk again, and then I was falling, falling, falling. I stopped for a second in alarm and put my hand on Will’s arm, looking up into his smoky blue eyes. “Would you check the railing on my porch? Make sure it’s not going to split in two like the one here?” There were steps leading up to it and it wasn’t high off the ground, but I was spooked.
    He laid his hand on mine and squeezed. “No problem.”
    At the landing, I led Gracie and Will to the bathroom with the claw-foot tub. Behind the door I pointed out the silk dressing gown. Gracie brushed her fingers over the skirt, closing her eyes. I’d done the same thing, wanting to isolate just my sense of touch as I felt the quality of the fabric. She angled her head slightly, a strand of her dark hair tumbling down her forehead. I watched her, amazed at how attuned she was to the fabric. Her eyelids fluttered as if she could absorb the history of the garment just by touching it. “I can almost see who wore this,” she said softly.
    Will nosed around the bathroom, finally gesturing to me that he was going to wait in the hallway.
    “Did it belong to the woman who owned the house?” Gracie asked as he started to leave. Her question made him stop.
    “Which owner? There have been a few.”
    “There have? I thought Justin Kincaid won the deed to the house in a poker game,” I said.
    Will leaned against the doorjamb, hands in his jeans pockets. “Right. So there was Vanetta and Justin Kincaid, but before that was Pearl and Charles Denison. They were the first owners. Far as I remember, the Kincaids let Jeb James’s grandmother live here for a spell. The senator lived with her as a boy. Or so the story goes.”
    I stared at Will. I’d been in this house a handful of times, most often with Zinnia James, and she’d never mentioned that her husband had lived here as a child. More secrets. It seemed I uncovered one everywhere I turned. Bliss was bursting with them.
    Gracie’s fingers tightened on the silk skirt. “This dressing gown belonged to Pearl,” she said. “I’m sure of it. She was the first owner, right? So it has to be hers. I can almost picture her in it,” she added, her eyes fluttering closed, a slight smile curving her lips.
    Sweet Gracie. She was a sixteen-year-old romantic at heart. We went on to look in each room, marveling at the attention to detail. “Barnett Restoration did a great job,” I said. From the ceiling molding to the windowsills to the hand-scraped wood floors, the house had been brought back to the glory it had known when it was first built.
    I paused at the staircase, drawing in a deep breath and bracing myself for the pain of descending. “Before we go, I want to check out the runway in the tent,” I said.
    Gracie pointed to the door at the end of the hallway. “Is that the widow’s walk?”
    As I nodded, Will bypassed the staircase and went for the door, Gracie on his heels. “Since we’re here, I wanna see this railing,” he said in what I imagined was his official architect voice.
    I followed him. “No, let’s go see the runway,” I said, but he was already turning the glass doorknob. Pulling the