“She made it two hours,” Christina said quietly. “New record.”
“She’s a fighter.” Marco’s hand rested on the carrier, protective and gentle. “Gets it from her mother.”
“She gets the stubbornness from you.”
“In Italy, we call it determination.”
“You would.”
They were bickering, but there was no heat in it—just the easy rhythm of two people who’d found their way to each other. Marco caught Tara’s eye and smiled.
“Thank you,” he said. “For all of this.”
“The party?”
“The everything.” He gestured at the inn, the glowing windows, the jack-o’-lanterns flickering in the dark. “The welcome. And the second chances. Most of all, the family.”
Christina reached over and took his hand. “He’s staying through Thanksgiving,” she said. “Then Christmas. Then we’ll figure out the rest.”
“There’s no rush,” Marco said. “We have time.”
Tara looked at them—her daughter with her hard-won trust, the man who’d given up a thousand easier paths to be here, the baby who’d started everything—and felt something settle in her chest. Acceptance, maybe. Or gratitude.
“You do,” she said. “You have all the time you need.”
Night came quickly, the way it did in late October.
The party was winding down, guests drifting to their cars with leftover treats and promises to come back soon. The jack-o’-lanterns still glowed, but softer now, their candles burning low. From inside, Tara could hear Ryan and his friends gathering their dice and cards, their voices cheerful with exhaustion.
She slipped out the back door and made her way to Patty’s Garden.
The rosemary had grown tall, silver-green in the fading light. The lavender was fading now, but still fragrant, its purple flowers giving way to seed heads that would scatter and sleep through winter. The chrysanthemums blazed bronze and gold, defiant against the coming frost. And in the center of it all, the little bronze plaque caught the last light of sunset.
In memory of Patty—who taught us that friendship is chosen family.
Tara knelt beside the plaque, her fingers tracing the familiar letters. The metal was cold now, but she didn’t pull away.
“I wish you could have seen it,” she said quietly. “The inn. The family. All of it.”
The garden was silent except for the wind in the rosemary.
“Christina’s happy. Really happy, finally. And Ally’s engaged—can you believe it? To that baseball player.” Tara laughed, the sound catching in her throat. “Evan’s teaching at the college. Ryan has friends. There’s a baby, Patty. A beautiful baby with her father’s eyes, and I get to be her grandmother.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I’m not sad. I want you to know that. I’m not standing here being sad. I’m standing here being grateful.” She pressed her palm flat against the plaque, feeling the letters under her skin. “You told me once that it was never too late to start over. I didn’t believe you. I thought you were being optimistic because that’s who you were, but I didn’t actually believe it was true for me.”
A leaf spiraled down from somewhere, landing on the rosemary.
“But you were right. You were right about everything. And I wish—” Her voice broke. “I wish you were here to see it. To see me. To see what we built.”
She stayed there for a long moment, letting the tears come, letting grief and gratitude mix together in that alchemy that never quite went away. Patty had been dead for nine months, but she was here too, in the plants Tara had chosen for her, in the bench Will had built, in the garden that gave strangers a place to sit with their own sorrows.
“Thank you,” Tara whispered. “For giving me the courage to change everything.”
Footsteps crunched on the gravel path behind her.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
