The garden, when Wren arrived, had been transformed exactly as Adaora promised — string lights woven through the old maple's branches, catching the late afternoon sun in a way that would only grow more beautiful as evening settled in; simple wooden chairs arranged in loose, informal rows rather than rigid columns; a small platform beneath the tree itself, unadorned except for a scattering of the same seasonal flowers Wren had insisted on from the beginning, sourced from the flower district stalls she'd walked past for a decade on her way to work.
She paused at the garden's edge, out of sight of the gathered guests, and took in the whole scene for a moment before anyone noticed her arrival — fifty-eight faces, every single one of them belonging to someone who had earned a place in this par
