Page 120 of Free to Live

“Listen, this party was supposed to be weeks ago. Dealing with her almost four-year-old’s patience lately has not been fun.” Joe begins to guide me away from Mary’s grave.

“Wait!” I cry out. Squatting, I gather the bouquet I dropped. Carefully, I lay it at the foot of her tombstone. I touch my fingers to the cold granite and whisper something meant just for the woman who will always hold a piece of Joseph Bianco’s heart. As she rightfully should.

“Thank you for making sure I stayed safe. I’ll be sure to give everyone your love.” Standing, I don’t feel the breeze lifting the ends of my hair. I remain still until Joe wraps his arm around me from behind. He quietly addresses his lost love.

“Hey, babe. I’ll bring Grace by soon.” Joe lays his own hand on Mary’s stone before he gently guides me away.

“Are you ready to go?” His soft look tells me he didn’t miss a thing.

I lean into him. “I am.”

Together we walk to his car, not saying anything. We let our love fill the silence, knowing it won’t last once we get to a party riddled with curious adults and rambunctious four-year-olds.

But that’s life.

Our lives.

Thank God.

Epilogue

Holly - fourteen years later

“Mama! I can’t find the shoes Aunt Em brought over earlier. Where are they are?”

“I ate them,” I yell back up the stairs to where Grace is getting ready for her senior prom with Kalie.

“That’s not funny.” There’s a long pause. “Are they with you?”

Running my fingertip over the top of the dark blue box holding Grace’s Stuart Weitzman crystal-encrusted heels, I feel the first prick of tears in my eyes. My voice is only slightly huskier when I yell back, “Yes!”

“Bring them up?” Grace’s shrieking order is oblivious to my emotional overload. Grace became mine in my heart since that moment in the cemetery when Joe and I left to go to her delayed almost-four-year-old birthday party. She was my stepdaughter for a short time after we got married a year later. And when we felt comfortable Eden and Seth understood they would always be her grandparents, I legally adopted her.

It was a packed courtroom that day with Freemans, Biancos, and Mosses. And none of us had a dry eye by the time the judge proclaimed Grace to be my adopted daughter.

Grace still visits Mary’s grave as often as she can. But it’s lacrosse season, and since she’s the team captain, time is something she doesn’t have a lot of. So, Joe and I still make sure there are fresh flowers every month at the base of her tombstone.

She hasn’t been forgotten.

“Could you not call me from your cell versus bellowing down the stairs?” I yell back. Picking up my wineglass, I take a long drink while Corinna laughs uproariously. “Keep laughing, sister. Your turn is coming.”

Corinna shrugs. “I’m not that worried.”

“That’s because you plan on sending Nicole with Em to shop for prom dresses!” I declare. Nicole is Colby and Corinna’s youngest child and the only daughter of their three children.

“Of course I do. I mean, really, has anything changed over the years?”

Ali walks in from the back deck where the rest of our family is waiting for the big prom dress reveal to pour herself some more wine. “Do you mean in terms of our lives or your fashion sense? Those are very different answers.”

The three of us laugh because she is totally right.

Our lives are insane, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Cassidy and Caleb’s oldest, Jonathan and Laura, are due home from their first years at Harvard and Skidmore, respectively, any day now. I should know when, but trying to keep up with Joe, Grace, Joey, and Lily’s schedules—not to mention my own—well, I just hope Cassidy programmed in an alert so I don’t miss the welcome home barbecue. Their youngest just finished his freshman year of high school.

Ali and Keene’s have been dealing with the trauma of girl teen years right alongside Joe and me as Kalie and Grace have remained thick as thieves. Keene swears all the women in his life were put on this planet to turn him gray well before his time. The silver in his hair these days looks good on him. So does being surrounded by all of his women: Ali, Kalie, and their twins, Regina and Valerie.

Jenna, Jake’s daughter from his first marriage, heads downstairs from where she’s been helping the girls. Her own slightly rounded belly sticks out in front of her. “Holly, I swear to God, if Grace didn’t look just like Joe and Mary, I’d swear she was Em’s. Talk about a budding fashionista.”