Page 119 of The Girl in the Moss

Maddocks whispered in her ear, “Remember, go easy on the death-do-us-part bit.”

Angie laughed, emotion filling her soul as she listened to the hymn that had once brought her such strange and dark memories but would now always be remembered for this—a joyous occasion. A promise of a future.

They exited the church and stepped into yellow sunlight. The cathedral bells started to clang, their peal ricocheting up and down the city streets as cherry petals blew from trees in the soft sea breeze.

Uniformed officers lined the stone stairs. Baskets were handed out, and fistfuls of petals were cast into the air, settling like spring snow on Angie and Maddocks and falling in a pink-and-white carpet on the pavement outside the church.

There was a gaggle of journalists out on the street. Cameras flashed. But this time the headlines would tell of a happy-for-now for an ex-cop and her clan who’d brought home alive one of the city’s daughter’s—Annelise Janssen.

Maddocks took Angie’s hand. The light in her man’s eyes as he looked into hers said it all. Love.

Maybe it wasn’t just truth. Maybe at the heart of it all, at the heart of all that was human, even in the dark, was love.