I spent thirty years mourning my first love, convinced he had died in that fire meant for both of us. I had replayed the smoke, the screams, the chaos in my mind a thousand times. Then one ordinary morning, while fussing over my hydrangeas, I saw him. Alive. Standing right next door. Scarred, older, but unmistakably him. And suddenly, every memory, every ache of the past, surged back in a wild wave. If I hadn’t been so stubborn about my hydrangeas that morning, I never would have seen the dead

I truly believed the hardest part of that week would be standing beside my mother’s hospital bed, watching machines breathe and blink for her while she lay completely still. I never imagined that while she was unconscious, another battle was happening behind our backs — a quiet test of character that would change our family forever. My mom, Shirley, is 82 years old. But don’t let that number fool you. She is the backbone of our family. She grows her own tomatoes every summer and says store-bought ones “taste like