Page 110 of Persephone's Curse
We held hands.
We put our foreheads together, leaning into each other.
Clara was still crying. We put our arms around her shoulders. We closed our eyes.
Then I felt a hand on my arm and Henry pulled me gently awayfrom my sisters. Bernadette and Clara drew Evelyn in between them.
“I’m not really sure what to do,” I said.
“Winnie, you’ve always known exactly what to do,” he replied. “Even if your execution is a bit hit or miss.”
He smiled and I smiled and how could I possibly be smiling here, at the end of the world? At the end ofHenry.
“Will it come back? Like with Clara?” I asked. “Will I see them anymore?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
My mother’s words came back to me then:
You’re always exactly where you’re supposed to be. And you keep everyone together.
Is that what I had done, with all the Farthing ghosts? Had I kept us all together without even really meaning to?
Would I miss them, the ghostly strangers I passed on my nighttime walks, the Farthing women who had come before me?
Would I miss Esme?
“You’re releasing them,” Henry continued. “All the Farthings. Esme. Andme. You’re releasing all of us.”
“And that’s okay?” I asked. “You think they will want that?”
“Yes,” he said. “I know they will.”
“But you?”
“Well, that’s a bit more complicated,” he said, and his smile turned sad, and he took my hand and held it between us.
“I don’t know how,” I said.
“You do,” he assured me. “You’ll find it.”
I closed my eyes.
I remembered Henry watching Clara paint on a thousand different nights, listening to Evelyn play the piano, sitting quietly as Bernadette sat and journaled, occasionally showing him something she had written, making him laugh or grow serious or shake his head in disbelief. Henry reciting silly poems to make me laugh. Henry appearing out of nowhere, scaring me to death. Henry, Henry, Henry.
And he was right.
I did find it.
The thing inside of me that let me see them all, the same thing that kept themhere. And I could release it, release them. I had that power, inside me, that power over them, that powerforthem. I could open a door, raise the curtains, set everything right.
I opened my eyes before I did it. Just to see him one last time, our ghost, our Henry.
Then I let go of his hand and set him free.
The light, when it came, was so bright I couldn’t understand it.
It burned through my closed eyes, a hot, warm, bright light that pulsed and thrummed, that contained music and felt like static in my brain. The whole city was going to see that light. The whole city would know about Henry.
