Page 115 of The Woman with the Target on her Back (Grassi Family)

After that, she’d thrown herself into finding local charities, and throwing herself into them. She was single-handedly working on an initiative to force the parks system to get a beach-comber to clean up all the litter on it.

She’d been busy trying to find her place in this new town, this very different life.

My ma probably wouldn’t have been so ticked off if she hadn’t found out that Traveler and I had gone out to eat with Aurelio as well as another dinner with Massimo and Cammie.

“She’s in her hometown,” I told my ma as I kissed her cheek. “She had a meeting with the developer today. And she wanted to see her father.”

“Oh,” my mom said, shoulders relaxing a bit. Because she couldn’t exactly be mad that the girl was spending time with her own family while I was spending time with mine.

“She wants to meet you, Ma,” I assured her. “She just wanted to heal up first. She was planning on coming tonight. But this developer thing is kind of important.”

It was the last thing.

She’d gone back to visit with her father and uncles.

Don had some complications after surgery, but he was finally home with his wife and kids. And a shiny new story about what had happened to him. One that didn’t involve being a dirty cop. Or implicating his friends either.

As for James, he’d done what he set out to do. None of us had any doubts on that front. The man was clearly a force to be reckoned with. He cleaned up his city. He got his control back.

Tranq would make its way back, but for the time being, his town was clear of it.

As for Stan, well, he was officially a missing person.

My money was on him never being found.

Sheryl’s reputation in the town was ruined as she was exposed for the criminal she was.

Traveler said that the same developer that was buying her place had already bought Sheryl’s farm.

Apparently Chuck and her old man had stopped by the farm, picking all the produce left, and dropping it off at the soup kitchen.

They weren’tgoodmen. But they weren’t bad either.

They existed in some gray area between.

The same could be said of me and mine, I guess.

“So, she is selling?” my mom asked, hope clear in her voice.

Clearly, my ma was already hearing wedding bells and thinking of baby booties. She was unabashedly obsessed with the idea of more grandbabies.

And while, yeah, that shit was on my mind too, I was okay with us taking our time to get there. We were still young.

We were currently having fun arguing over what kind of house would be perfect.

New builds were out, obviously. But I didn’t want a huge fixer-upper, either. I wasn’t like Nino. I didn’t want to spend years fixing up a place. Cosmetic shit was one thing, gutting the place was a complete other.

We both wanted a yard. Traveler, because she wanted a “native pollinator paradise.” Me, because I wanted to see kids playing in it one day. Even if I wasn’t looking forward to the yard maintenance.

“There won’t be any lawn maintenance since we are planting a clover lawn,”she’d argued.

“Clover means flowers and flowers mean bees. The kids could get stung on their feet.Wecould get stung on our feet.”

So, yeah, it was going to be a fucking process still.

Wedding and kids would be something to talk about sometime down the road.

“Yeah. She wants to be done over there, so she can really dig into the house search.”

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