“Geez. I didn’t know shoveling turned you on so much,” he teased.

We were both out of breath and overheated enough to abandon our winter coats, but our work wasn’t done. Together, we made several trips from the front yard through the empty house to build a bonfire out back, taking care to contain the fire within a ring of large rocks.

I felt like I was trespassing each time I stepped through the house’s front door and walked through its rooms to reach the back door in the kitchen, but reminded myself that this house was technically Trey’s real inheritance. The house was in a pitiable state of decrepitude, with stained, sagging ceilings, trash and bottles littering the floor, and mouse droppings everywhere. Carrying my last armload of dirt and roots, I followed a sunlit hallway farther into the house toward the bright kitchen, passing family portraits that remained framed on the wall despite all of the other destruction that the house had endured. There was a studio portrait of Trey’s mom and her sister as little girls, both holding parasols and smiling for the camera. That hung next to a picture of Trey’s mom on the day of her high school graduation from Willow High School. In it, she wore a cap and gown, and beamed proudly with her arms around her parents’ shoulders. She was different then, when she was our age, before she’d learned the hard way about greed and lust. It was easy to see from these pictures how Michael Simmons had been taken with her.

In the backyard, Trey and I held hands and silently watched the roots, branches, leaves, and thorns of the rosebush smolder. Smoke curled up toward the azure sky, and I let myself imagine that the smoke was pure evil, drifting out of our lives. We’d done it. We’d broken the curse. I tightened my grip on Trey’s hand and felt certain that this was the beginning of the rest of our lives. I’d agreed to finish the rest of the school year in Florida to make things easier for my mom while she and Glenn resettled, but there was nothing standing in the way of Trey moving down there to be with me now. And the idea of the two of us, moving on from this nightmare together, over a thousand miles away from this town, made me more excited than I’d been in a long time.

Hours later, when we arrived back at the Emorys’ house, my mom was waiting for me in her idling car. The sun was setting, and the warmth of the spring day had subsided to a wintry chill once again. Not wanting to say good-bye to Trey—but hoping it would only be a few weeks before we’d see each other again—I reminded him, “Just come down to Florida as quickly as you can. Get an apartment or something. You don’t have to wait until July anymore.”

“Oh, I’m coming to Florida,” Trey teased me. “Nothing’s ever going to keep me away from you again.” Not caring if my mom was watching, he kissed me. He kissed me like it was the end of the world, and he’d been saving up love for me his whole life for this moment. When we finally parted, he said softly, “It may take a few weeks to sort everything out up here, though. Wait for me.”