I worked in silence, save for the occasional rustle of pages or the quiet tremble of a breath. A tear would slip now and again, swept away with the back of my hand. I referenced his own account, quoted lines I knew by heart, pausing only when the weight in my chest became too heavy or the ache in my wrist too sharp. Sometimes, I’d rise to stretch my legs, wandering between moss-covered stones, trying to walk off the sorrow that clung to my spine.
The cemetery was still. The kind of stillness that hums. Only the soft crunch of autumn leaves disturbed the quiet, falling like whispered farewells from the copper trees above. Time blurred.
It wasn’t until the sky sank fully into dusk and the light had long since faded that I realized how dark it had become. My hands were stiff. The ink smudged.
I gathered my things with care, brushing the soil from the hem of my dress. And as I stood, I turned to the graves and blew a kiss toward the stones that bore my name, the name he’d once spoken like it meant something holy.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I promised softly.
For the first time in years, it felt like I was no longer running from my past. I was stitching it, finally, into the shape of my future.
forty
Just as the curse appeared, it disappeared. Silently. A trick of magic. The kind that settles when a war finally ends, when a soldier walks away from a battlefield and drops their sword in the dirt—not because they lost nor won, but because they didn’t have to fight anymore.
In a way Gentry was right. It was never about magic. Not really. The curse lived because Alice had died forgotten—and every woman after her lived afraid. Until me. She’d been betrayed by her own flesh and blood, who had chosen power under the guise of love. In some ways, I saw a lot of myself in Maggie. Justifying what couldn’t be undone. Clutching guilt like a talisman and calling it devotion.
But I also saw myself in Alice. Silenced. Sacrificed. The cost of someone else’s salvation.
I had carried both women inside me. Their grief, their fury, their fear. And I had let it define me, convinced myself I was cursed because I couldn’t control what I’d been given.
But not anymore.
For the first time in my life, I saw age. A line, faint but present, near the corner of my mouth. A softness to my jaw. A shadow of time on my face and I didn’t flinch. I didn’t reach for cream or correction. I touched the line and smiled, because I knew: I was finally alive.
Not cursed.
Not bartered for.
Not bound by someone else’s design.
Just me.
I had paid my dues. I had given my blood, my voice, my love. I had outlasted Fate’s snare and Time’s grip. And Death… he no longer followed me. He stood beside me. Not as captor. Not as foe. But as something else entirely.
He never saidI told you so. He just watched me from the shadows with that gaze, ancient and sad and full of things he didn’t have words for.
I thought the curse would go out with some dramatic finality, but curses like mine don’t die in spectacle. They die in surrender. Not the kind where you give up. The kind where yougive in—to life. To love. To time.
The evidence was gathered quietly. First came the gray hair. Then the second. And the third. My cheeks were wet with joy the day I noticed the soft curve of a smile line. Then the crease in my brow. My bones ached. My joints stiffened. And still I rejoiced.
Deep down, I knew the exact moment the curse broke apart. It was the same shuddered breath where I chose my life. To live it. Loudly, happily, fully. No longer afraid of what could be lost.
Sundays were the hardest.
I’d start with coffee, then pluck whatever blooms caught my eye in the garden—zinnias, lavender, poppies. With my notebooks and flowers tucked safely away in the basket of my bicycle, I’d ride down the hill to the cemetery where my family was buried.
It was the only place I seemed to be able to find him, as he dissolved from my life. At first, I’d done it to prove something to him, and myself. Except bitterness had a way of disappearing in the presence of joy, and my life continued to flourish in the way of friends and happiness. I’d talk and journal, speaking to whatever cared to listen, whether the bees or the wind.
The yew tree stood sentinel above me, fostering an environment that even Death could not evade. His presence was murky but familiar. The snap of a twig. Wind brushing my skin. A blooming flower.
He was there.
Reminding me of what I gained because he mustered the strength to lose it all.
That Sunday routine lasted me years.
I’d sit in the cemetery, waiting for the scent of salt, oleander, and decay to sneak its way under my nose—as if I could bring Death’s presence into my life by sitting still and waiting. Perhaps I conjured it, or perhaps he too couldn’t bear to completely stay away. But other times, I swore I heard the rough edges of his voice calling to me. Whispers on the wind. Like being drenched to the bone after a rainstorm.
