Watching Beau leave police custody was one of those rare moments when your life is snatched back from the brink. I won’t forget what it feels like to balance on the edge of disaster and somehow land in the place where you’re saved.
With Beau back, the razor’s edge isn’t a threat anymore. It feels more like the cost of choosing something real.
Now as Beau reaches for my hand, I don’t hesitate. I choose him.
In a place where people are always striving, always chasing down things that glitter, all I really want is the life we madetogether.
Epilogue
Six Weeks Later
“Oh my God,” I hear Nora call from the front door as she lets herself in. “What’s Marcus cooking?”
“We’re in here,” I answer her, but I’m sure she already knows.
When Nora walks in, Marcus is at the stove, and Beau and I are on stools at the island.
“I have a feeling whatever’s for dinner is going to fix me,” she goes on.
I blow her a kiss and say, “It’s going to take a lot more than sage brown butter to fix any of us.”
She walks behind Marcus, gives him a quick side squeeze, and sits down beside me as I slide her a glass of wine. Family dinner is back on. Marcus is filling a little pillow of ravioli while we all drool over the scent of sage brown butter.
The easy rhythm of life in Winter Park comes back like second nature. Long lake days and lazy rounds of golf return, and Nora and I have hung up our detective monocles. Nowadays, she drags me to HIIT class, and then I drag her out to a boozy lunch. Exactly as it should be.
“What are you wearing, by the way?” I say, giving her outfit the once-over.
Nora looks down at the dusty yellow overalls. “I was just by the house. We are starting to rehab the floors.”
“How…rustic. You know you’re paying other people to do that so you don’t have to, right?”
“I’m helping.”
“Let me rephrase. You know youcouldpay people to do that so you don’t have to, right?”
Nora laughs. “Details matter when you do a historical renovation. And I’m enjoying it. But I have a change of clothes in the car. I can grab them if you’re afraid manual labor is catching.” She wiggles her fingers at me like she’s casting a curse.
Rehabilitating a historic house has been good for her. She’s been putting all her art and design studies toward the renovation. And she’s made me stop calling it “the Hall House.”
“Whose turn is it?” I ask, looking around the room.
Nora says, “I invited Autumn, but she’s swamped in planning logistics for a surprise slumber party for Polly.”
“So no guest tonight?” Marcus asks from near the stove, and Nora shakes her head.
It’s a new tradition at family dinner. In honor of the olive branch Gemma extended my way all those years ago—reminding me that everyone needs someone every now and then—we take turns inviting someone to dinner. We try to stick to a monthly cadence. But the only clear rule is: If you spot someone who needs a friend or a lift in their week, bring them along.
Once, I brought Tippy. Another time, Marcus brought Tori, who’s still processing Gemma’s murder.
The inaugural dinner came the night Beau and I returned home from Ohio, where we had attended Gemma’s funeral. After anonymously covering the costs of a memorial service for her family, Beau and I slipped into the back pews of the church. I couldn’t save her, but she was a good friend. Someone who was so much bigger than her mistakes.
Even if she was here to sabotage Beau and me, she came here under duress.
Simon Avery has a long line of victims.
Gemma’s trading habit caught up to her in more ways than one, apparently. Not only did she lose her savings with Redwood, but in his dogged pursuit of the Redwood hacker, Simon figured out that she was trading stocks on proprietary information.
Insider trading when she should have been whistle-blowing.
