“I don’t know why you insisted on coming here, Em.” It had taken some doing, but Emily had talked her sister into stopping by on their way to market. Now they were confronted with the dispiriting sight of silent job presses, empty desks, and worktables still laden with stacks of paper.As Emily moved through the shop, her footsteps on the hardwood floor sounded hollow and foreign. She had never known the place to be so quiet. “I just wanted to see it one more time.”“I suppose I can understand that,” Karen said. “You spent a lot of time here with Papa.”“This is where he loved to be.”“Not so much toward the end.”Emily turned around. “What do you mean? He loved it here.”“Papa just wasn’t the same after the Gazette shut down, not his old fighting self. I can’t help wondering if he could have fought off the pneumonia if—” Karen blinked back sudden tears. “Oh, well. There’s no point in thinking that way.”“I’m not so sure. The paper was important to him.
