“I told her I wanted her and Ethan to stay, that I’d take care of them, that we’d figure it out. She said she has to work, that she’s still in the hole from the shit her ex pulled.”

“Hmm.” Alex rubbed the scruff on his jaw that he’d grown in deference to Jenny’s wishes for stubble at the wedding. Their father would’ve told him to shave his damned face.

“What does that mean? Hmm?”

“Did you happen to mention among those reasons you gave her to stay that you love her?”

“I… I… No, I didn’t. I thought it was too soon.”

Alex laughed. “She’s over there packing to leave. Soon enough it’s going to be too late.”

Alex’s words sent panic shooting directly to Paul’s heart.

“I’m not telling you what to do, but if she’s what you want—and I think she is—put it all out there, Paul.”

He was right. Alex was one hundred percent right. “She said she’d never get married again.”

“That was before she fell in love with you.”

Hearing Alex say, in such a matter-of-fact way, that Hope was in love with him made him feel elated, until he remembered the many obstacles still standing in their way. “What if I ask her and she says no?”

“Then at least you won’t have to spend the rest of your life wondering what might’ve happened if you went for it.” Alex held up a finger. “Wait here.”

Alex was gone long enough for Paul to break into a cold sweat. Was he really going to propose to her? And what if she did say no? What then? Alex’s return interrupted his panic attack.

“Hold out your hand.” Alex took Paul’s hand and dropped the ring their father had given their mother for their twentieth anniversary into his palm. Then he closed Paul’s hand around the ring and held it for a long moment. “Since Mom can’t wear it anymore, she’d want you to have it.”

It had become too big for her finger, and rather than take the chance that she might lose it, they’d convinced her to put it away for safekeeping—and told her that every time she asked about the ring.

“It doesn’t feel right to give away something that belongs to Mom.”

“Our mom, the one who loved and cared for us our entire lives, would want you to give that ring to the woman you love. Remember how much she hated waste of any kind? She can’t have valuables where she is now, and she’d say it was wasteful to let it sit in a drawer somewhere waiting for her to die so it can go to you anyway.”