“Gemma,” he said. At that point, the joggers, bikers, and parents pushing strollers realized what was happening and stopped to watch. Sanjay handed her a ring box. She opened it and gasped.

A pink diamond eternity band. The pink diamond eternity band.

“How is this possible? I tossed this into the ocean . . .”

Sanjay smiled. “Your aunt Celeste knew that the tide would bring it right back that night. Something about a full moon? She said she couldn’t let you throw it away just to make her feel better.”

“How long have you known she had it?” Gemma said, barely able to process the fact that he’d proposed, never mind the reappearance of the ring she thought was gone forever.

“Only since I told her I wanted to ask you to marry me. She said she’d been saving it for that very moment.”

When he slipped the ring on her finger, onlookers clapped and whistled. And when he said, “Will you marry me?” she barely managed to breathe out the word yes.

She was still on a high from it, reliving it over and over in her mind. But tonight was about work.

As the press filled in their cordoned-off seats, Gemma and her aunts discussed their positions on the podium. A familiar redhead pushed her way to the front of the crowd.

“I need a shot of the three of you,” said Regan O’Rourke. Gemma obliged, acutely aware that she was standing in the spot where she’d first stood with her mother as a child, now wearing the engagement ring that was a piece of her mother’s, flanked by Elodie and Celeste.

She smiled for Regan O’Rourke. And then it was time to address the room.

Elodie and Celeste moved to one side, leaving Gemma alone in the spotlight. She thought, briefly, of the night of her graduation, when she stood in front of the audience feeling so alone.