Page 83 of Take Me For Granite

She stops walking. Right there in the middle of the driveway, with the mist beading in her pink curls.

“Gabriel.”

“I meant it then. I mean it now.” I lift our joined hands and press a kiss to her knuckles. “Every one of those hundred and forty-three years. I would do them all again.”

Her lips part. And I’m pretty sure that for once in her life, April Stevens has nothing to say. I find I quite enjoy it.

The iron gates stand open before us. Beyond them lies the road. A perfectly ordinary road. I’ve spent more than a century staring toward it from the roof of my house. Imagining what it might feel like to walk down it. To choose a direction. To keep walking.

April squeezes my hand. “Ready?”

“Yes.” I step forward. And keep going, one foot, and then the other. Nothing stops me. There’s no invisible wall. No creeping cold or gray spreading at my fingertips.

I am standing on the road.

For a moment, I simply stand there. Breathing. Looking at the trees. The sky. The world.

“Gabriel.” April’s voice is strange. She isn’t looking at me. She’s looking back up the driveway. “Look.”

I turn.

Winchester House rises above the trees, gray stone and dark windows, morning mist curling around its turrets. And on the east roofline, where I have crouched for one hundred and forty-three years, there is nothing. Only an empty ledge. And far below it, in the rain-soaked flowerbed, a heap of broken granite.

“The thunder,” April whispers. “Last night. Right after you said—” She presses a hand to her mouth. “That wasn’t thunder.”

I stare at the empty ledge.

“That old woman told you that you would remain here until you understood what truly made a home worth keeping.”

“It took me one hundred and forty-three years. And one woman with pink hair, a terrible singing voice and the absolute best thing that’s ever happened to me.” I squeeze her hand. “It’s broken,” I say. The words feel far too small. “The curse is truly broken.”

April makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob, and then she does something I don’t expect. She releases my hand and takes a few steps backward. Toward the house. As though she’s giving me room to leave. As though she thinks I might want to.

I look at the road stretching away from Winchester House. At the freedom I’ve dreamed of for more than a century. Then I turn back toward her.

Because there’s only one place I want to be. I walk through the gates. Straight to April. I cup her face.

“Did you think I was going somewhere without you?”

She laughs shakily. “I don’t know. You’ve been trapped here for a really long time.”

“Yes.”

“And now you can go anywhere.”

“I can.”

Her eyes search mine. “So where do you want to go?”

I smile. “Wherever you are.”

Her face crumples. “Oh, damn it.”

I laugh. “What?”

“You can’t say things like that.”

“Why not?”