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 you could pay 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.
She was bound for federal prison, but Simon was willing to make her a deal. Having long suspected Beau’s involvement in the hack, Simon offered to look the other way on Gemma’s white-collar crimes if she’d come to Winter Park and see what she could learn about Beau and our life together.
Every few months, she would call him to relay that she was still coming up empty on clues that Beau had anything to do with the Redwood hack, but Simon couldn’t hear it. The longer she stayed, the more insistent he became that she find something or he would turn her in.
She had found comfort in her relationship with Shep.
The connection between them had been real, for both of them, for a time.
And Shep’s friendship with the Halls meant he was familiar with the key Fritz kept stashed under a planter for nights he Ubered home too drunk to remember where his car keys were.
The spare key gave Shep and Gemma access to the house whenever they needed a convenient spot to meet up.
Someplace near Park Avenue for Gemma, and away from Tippy’s games for Shep.
But when Shep’s love bombing became too suffocating and Simon’s dead-end pursuit of Beau too fruitless, Gemma decided she was out.
She distanced herself from Shep and packed up her apartment.
She sold the whole thing to Marcus and me by keeping up the appearance that she would stay, down to the job interview she let me help her land.
All that was left to do was finish Marcus’s anniversary party.
Then Shep confronted her, and their fight escalated. Unable to accept that his perfect new life was slipping away, he strangled her. It was the escape he had been longing for and, in the end, the thing he killed for.
Simon had arrived the day prior, hoping to use me for information on Beau and the hack. But Gemma’s murder turned all that upside down.
Some days, it still stuns me that someone so calculating was taken out of this world by something as unpredictable as a freak accident in a hurricane.
Nora raises her glass when she notices the faraway look in my eyes. “To Gemma.”
Beau clinks his glass with mine.
I look at Beau now, and smile. He winks, and I kiss the Buffalo Nickel on his wrist, right at the spot where the coin catches the light.
And then I remember I made a promise. “Marcus, we have to save some ravioli for Polly. Dowling’s making cauliflower pizza with vegan cheese.”
Ford’s out of town. His knee—which eventually required surgery thanks to him shirking doctor’s orders to rest—is finally strong enough to play in a tournament again, and I think I’ve almost convinced him I’m not a career criminal.
“She’ll be woozy with hunger by nightfall.” Beau laughs.
“At least she’ll get her slumber party redemption arc.” I smile. “Can you believe the slumber party was Dowling’s idea? Ford’s been compiling celebrity birthday wishes while he’s out on tour, and Autumn’s been asking for my input on monogrammed sleeping bags and tents with fairy lights.”
There’s a smile I can’t hide when I think about how loved Polly is. How many people she already has in her life.
And if we get it right, she’ll never be starved for approval from some megalomaniac boss.
Nora raises an eyebrow. “You and Autumn are, like, friend-friends now?”
“I’ve been checking on her.” I shrug. “I don’t know. Don’t make it a thing.”
But these are the people who know me best. They know my habits by now.
I collect strays and outliers. I’ll look after Autumn with the same loyalty I’d give any of them if they need me.
Because it’s who I am. There have been times when I thought my always, all-in loyalty was my biggest liability.
Maybe it still is. But it’s also the best thing about me.
“Aww. I think it’s sweet.” Marcus smiles. “Este making friends is like those YouTube videos where the wolf thinks it’s a puppy and tries to play with the other dogs. Last week, I saw her talking to Carol.”
Carol and I are softening toward each other, too. We’ll probably never be best friends. But after what she did for Beau, we’ll never be sworn enemies either. She helped Beau when she didn’t have to, and for that, my loyalty is for life.
“Okay,” Marcus announces. “Everyone grab a plate. We’re dining alfresco tonight.”
Everyone grabs a plate and walks toward the already-set table in the covered area of the pool deck. And I take it as a personal milestone that I manage to walk by the pool with only one leery glance.
When Marcus saw that I had been avoiding the pool deck since Simon was found, he said we needed to make some new memories in my backyard. Good ones. The kinds that turn down the dread of the past.
As we make our way to the table, though, Marcus and Nora hang back in the kitchen, his hand grazing hers when they both reach for a serving spoon. Their eyes linger on each other for a fragile heartbeat, and then Nora blushes, taking the spoon and scurrying toward the patio.
My heart leaps to my throat. “What was that?” I whisper to Marcus when Nora’s out of earshot.
His shoulders fall as he gives me a look.
I know. I know. Incorrigible.
“What?” I hiss. “I just think you guys should kiss already.”
“Really?” Marcus folds his arms with a good-natured smile. “You’ve been so subtle with your hints, like the times you locked us in the Lemon & Fig supply closet.”
“That wasn’t always me. One time the bread guy did it by accident.”
“One time.”
“Fine.” I shrug.
“She loved Will,” he says, his face softening to something like regret. “What kind of a guy makes a play for another man’s wife after what she went through last year?”
“The kind that likes her.”
But there’s something in his expression that tells me he’s not ready yet. Maybe he’s in the same holding pattern Nora’s in. Penance for whatever mistakes they think they’ve made.
Every relationship has its own DNA. Tippy’s and Shep’s. Beau’s and mine. No matter how much I want to will them together, Marcus and Nora will have to choose their path.
“Fine,” I say again, and sigh dramatically. “Just don’t wallow in whatever that is for too long. Don’t miss out because you’re scared.”
We gather the last of the plates and make our way outside. And there’s a peace that comes over me that I haven’t felt before. Knowing it took every turn—losing my parents, moving in with Delia, every painful reinvention, every mistake Beau and I carried—to land in this moment.
Life isn’t just the razor’s edge. It’s what you make of the choices and the chances.
“You doing okay?” Marcus asks as he watches my gaze drift toward the pool.
“Never better,” I reply, meaning it.
And once we’re all seated, looking at the people around the table, my heart swells.
We clink our glasses together and settle into our usual conversations.
Marcus’s restaurant. Nora’s house. Beau’s latest hyperfixation—restoring a buttercream-colored 1981 Mercedes 300TD biodiesel.
And my latest scheme—trying to get Polly to start a book club with me and some of the other neighborhood kids.
We’re lucky to be here. I’ve learned that much.
If not for a few choices or a turn of fate, I could have ended up with Simon.
I could have been Gemma. It’s hard to trace how we got here, harder to predict what will come next.
As the conversation winds down, I spot Marcus whisper something sweet into Nora’s ear, and she smiles.
Then, Beau leans over and presses a kiss to my forehead. I savor the warmth of his lips and the breeze coming off the lake, knowing we are the lucky ones.
This is the life I want.
It’s not the life I was running down. Or the one I ran from. It’s not even what I thought I wanted. It’s better—messier, warmer, built with people I love. And it’s so much better than I could have dreamed.