ISABELLA'S POV

The maintenance cart was parked beside the hedge, half-hidden behind a stack of folding chairs.

The rest of June's headstone was in the bed of it, dumped on top of torn sod and a coil of extension cord. The rest of the pieces had been swept up with a shovel. Granite chips were mixed in with mud and bent stems.

I found an empty cardboard box by the shed, the kind the florists had used for the roses, and crouched beside the cart. I set the piece I'd carried down the steps inside first. I started picking out every piece I could find, one at a time.

Two workers passed over my head with a long garland of white roses between them. Petals shook loose and landed in the box, on the stone dust, on my bleeding fingers. I brushed them out. More fell.

"Isabella."

Daniel's shoes stopped next to my knee. I didn't look up right away. Some part of me was still waiting for him to kneel down and help.

He held out a business card instead.

Hartwell Memorials. Restoration & Replacement. Below the logo, in bright red print: Spring Special, 20% Off Upright Granite Markers Starting at $1,899.

"They do good work," he said. "I'll cover it. Pick whatever you want."

I stared at the card. Then at him.

"You think if you pay enough, they can put her name back together?"

"That's not what I said."

"It's exactly what you said."

He let out a breath, the one he always used when I was being difficult. "We can buy another stone, Isabella. Stop acting like it's the end of the world."

In the corner of the box, under a chip with half an E on it, was the tiny plastic bracelet I'd tucked into the base of her stone last year. Baby Girl Mercer. 2 lbs 1 oz. The ink had faded almost white.

Two years ago, I'd crawled into a wrecked car to reach him. I'd lost June because of it. I'd lost the chance to ever carry another baby because of it.

And he'd just offered me a coupon.

I didn't take the card. I put the bracelet in my coat pocket next to the wooden moon, lifted the box against my hip, and stood.

The cemetery office was a small brick building near the front gate, with a bell over the door. I needed a lid for the box and something to wrap the larger pieces in so they wouldn't knock together in the car.

I had just set the box on the counter when the bell rang behind me.

"Isabella, good, you're still here." Celeste swept in, slightly out of breath, her heels leaving damp prints on the floor. Daniel came in after her. "The photo session starts in forty minutes. I need you to take down the ribbons."

"What ribbons?"

"The white ones. Around the little fence, and all those flowers people left. It's too much white. It clashes with my dress in the photos." She said it like she was asking me to move my car.

"Those are memorial ribbons. Other families put those there."

"Then they can put them back tomorrow."

She had a clipboard tucked under her arm. I could see the top sheet. Temporary Event Setup Authorization, Rosehaven Memorial Garden. A list of vendors, a time window, a diagram of the children's section with an X where June's stone used to be.

At the bottom, on the line marked Authorized Family Representative, was Daniel's signature. The tight, slanted D I'd seen on our mortgage papers and our marriage license.

I reached over and pulled the clipboard out of her hand.

"Hey," Celeste said.

I turned to Daniel. "You signed this. You told them you were family so they'd let her crew in."

"I am family."

"You're June's father. Not hers."

Through the window behind the counter I could see the brass plaque on the iron gate to the children's section. Private Interment Area. No Unauthorized Gatherings, Events, or Alterations. Rosehaven had made us sign a copy when we bought the plot. I'd kept it in a folder for two years.

Outside the door, someone had dropped a handful of white satin on the steps. Cut ribbon. The ends were sliced clean, like they'd used scissors.

Last spring, I'd begged Daniel to come with me on Mother's Day. He'd said he was swamped. That same week he'd called Rosehaven twice on Celeste's behalf, about a "venue question." I'd seen the number on our phone bill and never asked.

"Every time I asked you to come here," I said, "you were busy."

Daniel's jaw shifted. "Celeste has one engagement party, Isabella. You can visit this grave whenever you want."

"Not today. Today she gets it."

"It's a few hours."

"It's her anniversary." I set the clipboard on the counter, hard. "I want Celeste to apologize. Not to me. To June."

Celeste's hand went straight to her chest, landing over a silver charity medal pinned to her dress, the one from the Children's Burn Foundation gala. "I just wanted one perfect day," she said, her eyes filling. "Is that so terrible? I didn't know this would hurt you so much."

"You knew whose name was on that stone."

Daniel stepped between us, one arm angled back to keep her behind him.

"Don't do this," he said. "Don't you dare talk to her like that. If it weren't for Celeste, I wouldn't be standing here. You know that."

"Daniel." I kept my voice level. "I was the one who crawled into that car."

His face went cold so fast it was like a door slamming.

"Not this again."

"The engine was on fire. I broke the window with my elbow and pulled you out by your belt. Celeste showed up after."

"Celeste sat with me in the hospital for three weeks," he said. "I wrote her a thank-you card the day I could hold a pen. She still has it."

"I do," Celeste whispered behind him. "I keep it in my wallet."

"And you've been trying to steal that from her ever since," Daniel said. "Making up stories. It's sick, Isabella."

I pushed up the sleeve of my coat. The scar wrapped my left wrist like a cuff, shiny and puckered where the door frame had burned through my skin.

"Look at it."

He didn't. His eyes stayed on my face.

"Daniel, look at my arm."

"Celeste saved my life," he said. "You couldn't even save our baby."

The box slid on the counter. I caught it just before it went over the edge, and the pieces of June's stone knocked together inside with a dull clatter.

I didn't say anything else.

I pressed the chips back into place, straightened the largest piece so it lay flat, and folded the flaps down. Then I took my car keys out of my pocket.

"Where are you going?" Daniel asked.

"Home. For now."

"Julian's family will be here in half an hour. You'll apologize to Celeste before they arrive." He paused. "Or don't bother coming home at all."

I looked at him for a long moment. "You'd really throw your wife out for her?"

"Where would you even go?" He almost laughed. "You don't even have a home without me."

I didn't answer.

He had never once asked about the farmhouse my grandmother left me, or the studio lease, or the accounts in my name. He'd never thought any of it was worth knowing about.

"Ms. Calloway?"

The office manager, a gray-haired woman named Gail, came out from the back with a manila folder. She didn't meet my eyes.

"I'm sorry. I'm required to give you a copy of this." She slid it across the counter. "A complaint was filed this afternoon."

Paper-clipped inside the folder was our plot record, with June's interment number at the top. Section C, Lot 14. Under it was a typed form.

Complainant: Celeste Moreau. Nature of complaint: intentional damage to private event property and disruption of an authorized gathering. Requested action: the respondent be barred from Rosehaven Memorial Garden.

Celeste looked down at her shoes.

My hands were steady as I turned to the last page.

A witness statement was stapled to the back. Daniel's name was printed at the top, and his signature sat at the bottom.

The last line read: I request that Isabella Mercer be denied entry to the Section C interment area until the engagement event has concluded.

He'd locked me out of my daughter's grave.

ISABELLA'S POV

I came back to Rosehaven the next afternoon with a manila envelope tucked under my arm.

My lawyer had stayed up until two in the morning drafting what was inside. Petition for dissolution of marriage. A settlement agreement. Flags marking every place Daniel needed to sign.

Before I left the house, I'd sent one email to the cemetery office. It was short and formal, and it was signed with my full name and the title I'd never once needed to use. By nine, Gail had called me back with her voice shaking and told me the complaint had been withdrawn. No one would stop me from seeing June again.

The gazebo was already crowded. Celeste's engagement party had spilled across the lawn, with caterers carrying trays and a string quartet tuning near the hedge. Guests in pastel linen held champagne flutes and laughed too loudly for a place full of graves.

I kept my head down and walked toward the storage room behind the office. The rest of June's stone was in there, packed into a wooden crate Gail had found for me. All I wanted was to take it home.

I made it halfway across the lawn.

"Seriously, Isabella?"

Daniel stepped into my path. He wore the navy suit again, freshly pressed, and his voice carried just far enough for the nearest guests to turn.

"You had three hundred and sixty-five days to come here," he said. "And you picked the one weekend that matters to Celeste. Twice."

A silver pin glinted on his lapel. A small bar engraved with DM.

I'd bought it four years ago, the week he signed the lease on his first boutique hotel. We'd had forty dollars in checking and a bottle of grocery-store wine. He'd pinned it on himself in the bathroom mirror and pulled me in against his chest.

"When I make it, Isabella, everything I have will be yours."

He still wore the pin. He just didn't remember the man who'd made the promise.

"I'm here for my daughter's headstone," I said. "Then I'm leaving."

"Isabella?"

Celeste's voice cut across the lawn. She hurried toward us in pale blue silk, one hand pressed to her collarbone, a diamond the size of a thumbnail flashing on her ring finger. A crowd drifted after her, glasses in hand.

"I'm sorry," she told them, her eyes already wet. "I didn't want to say anything. But she's here again."

"Who is she?" a woman in a sun hat asked.

"Daniel's wife." Celeste's voice wobbled. "Yesterday she showed up while we were setting up and just lost it. She was screaming at the crew. And then she pulled her own baby's headstone off the cart and it broke." She turned and pointed at the crate, which a groundskeeper had just wheeled out of the storage room. "Right there. Those are the pieces."

The guests looked into the crate. Split granite, mud still caked in the carved letters. Fragments of the engraved date. A chipped corner from the base.

"She's been jealous of me for years," Celeste whispered. "I just wanted one happy day."

Someone murmured, "That's awful." A man shook his head and took a long drink from his flute.

Off to the side stood a tall man in a gray suit. Julian. He wasn't looking at me. He was staring at the broken stone, and then, slowly, at Celeste.

I turned to my husband.

"You were there, Daniel. Tell them what you saw."

He didn't hesitate. He didn't even look at the crate.

"Stop it," he said. "Stop humiliating her."

"I asked you a question."

"And I'm giving you a way out." He lowered his voice, as if he was being generous. "Apologize, and we'll forget the disruption. Nobody presses anything. We all move on."

"She pushed it. You watched her."

"Apologize to Celeste, Isabella. Right now. In front of everyone."

I looked at him and finally understood something that should have been obvious years ago.

Every fight we'd had since June died had ended this way. He never asked what happened. He never wanted the truth. He only wanted me quiet, as fast as possible, so the room could go back to being comfortable for everyone else.

I opened the envelope and set the papers on the cocktail table between us, right next to a half-full flute of champagne.

"I'm not apologizing," I said. "And I'm not going to be your wife anymore."

For a second, the only sound was the cellist dragging her bow across a string.

Then Daniel laughed. A real laugh, loud enough to turn more heads.

"Divorce?" He picked up the papers and flipped through them. "Okay. And then what? You'll live where? On what? You've spent four years in my hotels, Isabella. Eating my room service. Charging things to this." He pulled a black card out of his inner pocket and tapped it against the table. "You don't even know what your own electric bill costs."

"Give me back the papers."

He turned to the guests instead, holding them up like evidence.

"You see what I deal with? I've put up with this for two years. The crying, the scenes, the stories. I kept telling myself she'd get better." He shook his head. "I've been patient with an unstable wife for a long time."

A few people looked away from me. The woman in the sun hat studied her shoes.

Celeste had moved to Julian's side and wrapped both hands around his arm. Her face was arranged into sympathy, but the corner of her mouth had curved up just slightly.

Daniel stepped closer until I had to tilt my head back to see him.

"Put these away," he said quietly. "Go home. We'll talk tonight."

I held out my hand, palm up. My ring finger was bare, a pale band of skin where gold used to be.

"The papers, Daniel."

His jaw worked. Then he slammed the stack down on the table. The flute tipped, and champagne rolled across the top page, soaking the corner and blurring my lawyer's letterhead.

"Fine," he said. "Push this, and you walk out with nothing. Not one cent of mine."

"I don't want your money."

"Good. Because without me, you're nothing. You don't even have enough money to bury your own child."

The words landed in the middle of the lawn, and nobody laughed.

I didn't answer him. I bent and picked up the papers, shaking the champagne off the wet corner. I squared the edges against my palm and slid them back into the envelope.

Then I turned toward the crate.

That was when I heard tires on gravel.

A black Rolls-Royce rolled through the front gate and stopped at the edge of the lawn. The quartet faltered. A driver stepped out and opened the rear door.

Alexander Cross got out.

He was taller than he looked in the business pages, in a charcoal suit cut close to his shoulders, a dark leather folder in one hand. When he shifted the folder, I saw the gold Evergreen crest pressed into its cover.

"Oh my God," Daniel said, and his voice jumped half an octave.

He was already moving. He tugged his jacket straight, touched the silver pin on his lapel, and nearly jogged across the grass.

"Mr. Cross. Daniel Mercer, Mercer Hotel Group." He thrust out his hand. "Mr. Cross, I've been trying to arrange a meeting with you for months."

Alexander looked at the hand.

He didn't take it.

"I'm not here for you, Mr. Mercer."

He stepped around Daniel as if he were a folding chair someone had left in the way, and walked straight to me. Up close, I could see the small onyx cufflinks at his wrists, and the faint frown when his eyes dropped to the crate of broken granite.

"I got your notice this morning," he said, lowering his voice for me alone. "Is this the section?"

"Yes."

"And the damage?"

I nodded at the crate. He looked at it for a long moment, and something in his face went very still.

Behind him, Daniel's smile hadn't quite fallen yet. It was just stuck.

I looked up at Alexander.

"Mrs. Mercer," he said, loud enough now for every guest on the lawn, "would you like me to shut down this engagement party?"

Daniel shoved forward, staring at me like he'd never seen me before.

"What the hell is he talking about? Why would she get to decide that?"

Alexander placed the folder in my hands.

I opened it. On the first page, under the Evergreen seal, my fingertip came to rest on a signature I knew better than anyone's.

My own.

Then I heard Alexander answer, calm as anything.

"Because you're standing on her property."