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J ulia felt a new resolve, a knowing that she couldn’t let him kill her. She was going to fight back and save her own life. It was another premonition, one she knew as surely as the night Mike had been murdered. The knowledge gave her a preternatural calm, even under the point of a knife.

Suddenly a faint blue aura materialized around her, enveloping her in a shimmering cerulean haze.

Julia didn’t know if it was a hallucination, a psychedelic, a surge of adrenaline, or even her channeling Caterina.

A vibrant new energy coursed throughout her body, rushing through her circulatory system like a transfusion of something otherworldly, empowering her.

Julia marshaled every cell of her newfound strength and shoved the man off her, getting to her feet.

He staggered backward, dropping the knife, his mouth agape.

She didn’t know if he saw the aura or if she was hallucinating his reaction, but it didn’t matter now.

She squared off against her husband’s killer.

The man turned to get away, but Julia grabbed him by the arm and whipped him at the base of the sculpture.

He stumbled toward it, losing his balance, his arms windmilling.

He fell into the sculpture. His head slammed its base with a solid thud .

He groaned on impact, then slid to the ground, writhing in pain.

Police sirens blared at the garden entrance, and Julia heard them as if from another place and time.

Her blue aura began to dematerialize around her, blurring into a spangled mist that rejoined the ether and the spirits, of which she was but a part.

She felt herself coming into herself again, tingling all over, nothing less than a woman in full, possessing an array of powers, a strength of her own, one profoundly human and powered by love.

She was a wife, avenging a dearly beloved husband.

Sirens screamed into the garden, filling the air with deafening sound, followed by flashing red and white lights.

Julia looked over to see police cruisers bounding across the grass, their high beams bouncing as they headed toward her.

She waved them down, and the cruisers lurched to a halt.

Carabinieri jumped out, shadows racing to her and her attacker, who was still groaning at the base of the sculpture.

Behind the police ran Courtney and Fiamma.

Julia’s heart soared, and she ran toward the women.

All three opened their arms, meeting and hugging each other.

Julia managed not to cry, feeling an outpouring of gratitude for a best friend who was closer than any blood relation, as well as a blood relation who was a total stranger, but who somehow, in that moment, felt like the most remarkable of everyday miracles.

A loving mother.