Chapter 31
Olivia
My mother’s gravestone sat beneath an oak tree, its branches swaying gently in the breeze, casting dappled shadows across the polished granite.
The sunlight softened the edges of everything, even the truths I’d spent years trying to hold in my hands.
Maybe, in the end, death softens us too.
I placed a bouquet of daffodils, her favorite flowers, beside the stone.
A honeybee hovered, drawn to their bright-yellow petals—a tiny reminder of life continuing, even here, where time felt suspended.
It was hard to believe so much time had passed.
I had my mother’s inscription updated. At the time of her funeral, I’d only inscribed her name:
Bonnie Anne Piroso
But now it read:
Bonnie Anne Piroso
1964–2024
In our hearts.
Your memory lingers, fond and true.
There is not a day that we do not think of you, Mom.
What I’d learned in those months was that grief wasn’t just about what you lose, it was also about what you find.
You can still have a relationship with someone even after they’re gone.
I talked to my mom more than I ever did when she was alive.
I told her stories, asked for her advice; even if I didn’t hear an answer, I liked to think she was listening.
Some days, I told her about Wren. About the way Wren’s courage made me braver too.
Other days, I talked about our little grief group—about how they’d helped me learn to let go of the anger, and, somehow, hold on to the love.
I had a dream last night. In it, I was seven years old, scared and desperate for my mom.
Then I was sixteen, so angry I wanted to scream, wanting justice for every day she hadn’t chosen me.
And then I was me, as I am now, standing quietly beside her.
I didn’t know if it was healing or just the passage of time, but I finally found a way to listen to each part of myself—the young girl who needed a mom who was never there, the teenager who rebelled out of anger and hurt, and the adult who understood that sometimes people can’t give you what you need, even if they love you. I finally let go.
There was a burial happening on the far side of the cemetery, framed by a small group of people dressed in black, their voices blending softly with the wind.
A caretaker nearby tended to the weeds around a gravestone.
When he saw me, he straightened up, brushed dirt from his hands, and smiled in recognition.
“Always loved watching her on the TV,” he said, nodding toward my mother’s name. “Brilliant journalist, she was.”
I looked down at the gravestone, tracing the words with my gaze. “Yes,” I responded, “she was.”
Weeks earlier, Wren and I had sat in her Cabriolet, waiting for Emerson to return with coffee. The drizzle outside blurred the world through the windows. Some faint pop song hummed through the radio. Wren had been unusually quiet, her fingers tapping absentmindedly against the steering wheel.
“Are you worried about Emerson driving?” I asked.
Wren turned, startled out of her thoughts. “Huh?”
I smiled, brushing my fingers through her hair. “You seem far away.” I shrugged. “I just wondered if you were worried about an overcaffeinated Emerson driving your precious baby?”
Wren snorted with laughter. “I trust her,” she replied. “I’ve just been thinking—”
“Oh,” I replied. “About what?”
“About you,” she sighed. “And the story.”
I glanced at her, confused. “What story?”
“The story,” she replied, firmly. “About Lucy’s innocence. About the cover-up. The boy and his family deserve justice.”
I stared at her. “But we don’t know how far this could go. What if it brings everything back? The press, the scrutiny…all of it?”
Her hand found mine, a quiet reassurance. “Then we will face it together. You’re the only one who can tell it.”
As Wren’s words often did, they stayed with me for the entire car ride back, even as Emerson rattled off bird facts at lightning speed in the hope we’d spot a black rosy-finch—a bird so elusive it may as well be Bigfoot’s pet.
Those same words—You’re the only one who can tell it—swirled in my mind for days afterward, a heaviness I couldn’t shake.
Cassie didn’t get the job as anchor. She was informed just before going live on air, and, whether it was the years of scheming catching up to her, the misplaced assumption that I might get the position, or simply the pressure of it all, she snapped.
Her meltdown unfolded spectacularly during her segment.
The silver lining? I was officially off the hook for the station’s most embarrassing on-air moment.
In the aftermath, Colin called me into his office.
Bracing for some sort of vitriol, I was caught off guard when he offered something entirely unexpected: an apology, something I don’t think anyone has ever gotten from Colin.
He leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his beard, his expression unusually reflective.
“Olivia,” he began, “I owe you an apology.”
I’d blinked. “You do?”
He sighed, shuffling things around on his desk.
“I’ve lied to you,” he said flatly. “I actually didn’t like your mother.
Bonnie was…a powerhouse, sure, but she was ruthless.
And there were many occasions she had professionally screwed me over.
But the powers that be loved her, and so I had no choice.
Every time I saw you, I saw her. And it just…
” He took in a deep breath. “To be frank, you just pissed me off.”
“I—”
He held up his hand. “It was wrong. It was unfair. It was unprofessional. I was too hard on you. You’re nothing like her.”
I didn’t know how to respond.
“You chose integrity,” he continued. “Your mother would have absolutely thrown B.W. Paisley under the bus. Hell, she would have thrown you under the bus for a career-making story. But you didn’t. I admire that about you, Liv. Which is why I’m offering you the promotion to anchor.”
What I said next blew my own mind.
“I don’t want it,” I replied. Colin stiffened, just as surprised.
“What I want,” I said, “is to be head of investigative journalism. That’s what I care about, uncovering truths.”
Because I knew the story I was going to pursue. And I was going to blow the lid off it.
After a long while, Colin grinned at me. “All right, Piroso. It’s yours.”
I couldn’t predict the future any more than I could have predicted the winding path that brought me here.
I didn’t know what would happen when the story was aired—whether it would be met with truth and justice, or whether it would dredge up all sorts of darkness.
But that uncertainty is part of living. There would always be things I couldn’t control, things I couldn’t know.
But here’s what I did know: I was never late for our grief group meetings anymore.
Rita still happily took my Us Weekly magazine offerings.
I found a strange kind of freedom in sharing my grief, letting it breathe in a room filled with people who truly understood.
Wren bought Gill’s property, and I leased my condo to officially move in with her.
On Wednesday mornings, we always had breakfast at Sam’s—three pancakes, stacked high, with butter and syrup smeared in the middle.
I knew that was still the best way to have them, and I knew Gill would always remind us if we forgot.
Sometimes Emerson joined us when she was home from college, and, when she did, we took long drives through the mountains.
We talked about Winnie, about Lucy, and about my mother.
Because that’s all we could do for the people we had lost.
We couldn’t bring them back. We couldn’t rewrite who they were.
But we could remember them. We could keep talking about them.
I knew that the sun would still rise and set over Everston, painting the sky with colors that could take your breath away.
I knew that the old steam train would still operate to and from Norvale in the summertime.
I knew that the grief we carried would soften over time, but never disappear.
And I knew that I loved Wren.
The afternoon sunlight followed me home as I drove down Ducks Crossing Road.
The wildflowers had begun to dot the side of the road once more, the butterflies returning.
Wren was sitting on the porch swing as I pulled into the driveway, her hair catching the golden light of the setting sun.
She held a mug in her hands, the steam curling softly in the air.
The sight of her always made my heart skip, the kind of skip that felt like falling, but in the best way.
She glanced up at me, her smile gentle, as though she had been waiting for me all along.
The tray of fresh succulents I’d picked up on my way home wobbled precariously on the passenger seat, and I loaded everything into my arms before walking toward her, careful not to spill the soil.
“Have you noticed this?” she asked, gesturing to the swing.
“Noticed what?” I replied, as I set the tray down near the steps and moved closer to her. I kissed her cheek, soaking in its warmth.
She ran her fingers along the edge of the swing, her touch reverent. “There’s an inscription,” she replied. “It says, ‘Gill, I am not here, but I am still here. I love you always, Edith.’ ”
I leaned in, following Wren’s fingers across the delicate carving. “How have we not noticed this before?” I wondered. So many nights we had sat out on this swing, watching the fireflies pepper the garden edge and the evenings roll in.
Wren nodded, her expression wistful.
“Everything okay?” I asked, noticing the faraway look in her eyes.
“I was just thinking about bluebirds, actually,” she admitted.
“Oh?” I tilted my head, leaning against the swing’s armrest.
“Did you know they sing to each other during nesting season? Kind of like they’re serenading their partner.”
I laughed. “Is that so?”
“Marvelous, aren’t they?” She grinned, and ran her thumb across my lip, humming a tune, before leaning in and kissing me softly.
“Are you ready to tackle our wall project?” she asked.
“I guess I have to be,” I responded. “It’s not going to renovate itself.”
The wall in question was in the upstairs hallway.
The old plaster was cracked and peeling, and we’d decided to open it up to expose the original woodwork underneath—a plan that might have been overly ambitious but felt worth the effort.
Gill had been quite right about one thing, there was always something that needed fixing.
Upstairs, Wren ran her fingers over the uneven surface of the wall.
She grinned mischievously. “Imagine if we find treasure behind here?”
I shuddered. “I’d take diamonds over anything sinister.”
Wren laughed. “You’ve been reading too much true crime.”
We started peeling away the plaster, dust filling the air as chunks of the wall came loose.
Wren and I worked side by side, the rhythm of our movements in sync.
She talked animatedly about all sorts of ways we could decorate the room, but our banter was cut short when a section of the wall suddenly gave way with a loud crack.
A screeching sound erupted from the hole, and we both froze.
Staring back at us, wide-eyed and utterly unimpressed, were the very opossums that had made themselves persistent guests in this home.
Wren and I squealed in response and stumbled backward.
We tripped over each other, the tarp we had laid out, and the various tools around us, and landed on the floor in a heap of tangled limbs.
For a moment there was only silence, save for the rustling of the opossums retreating farther into the wall.
We looked at each other in disbelief.
“Oh my god, they got us,” Wren exclaimed.
We burst into laughter. The kind of laughter that doubles you over and makes your stomach ache. We couldn’t stop, our giggles filling the room, and spilling into the house like sunlight through windows.
Life has a way of handing us these small, unexpected, messy, perfectly imperfect moments.
They are easy to overlook in the chaos of our daily lives, but they are also the ones that matter.
And maybe that’s all life is—a collection of memories, of love, laughter, resilience, and connection, stitched together to make us whole.
Grief may silence us at first, but it also reminds us of why we go on living.
And, as long as we’re here, we can still choose to tell the story.