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Elliot could nod right now and it would be done He could release Selena, release hiether, they could all create the future

It was so siht fro The world cahtforward choices

"Elliot," she said in that soft, throaty voice, the one that alwayshere with us"

Maeve e shoulder "Stay, Elliot"

Elliot looked up Above the women's heads, he stared at Ian, flashed him a last, silent question

Very slowly, Ian nodded

372

A grin broke across Elliot's big face "I'd like to stay"

A whooping holler rose fro Elliot's hand, patting his back Welco him

Selena turned to Ian then, and he knew that if he lived to be a hundred, he'd never forget that , brilliant love in her eyes

She moved into the circle of his arainst him, and knew that this time it was forever He closed his eyes, heard the distant rumble of the sea, the ebb and flow of the horse's breath, the ull cawed, and it sounded like the cry of a newborn babe God's exquisite symphony

Slowly he opened his eyes and gazed down at her, loving her so oddess," he said in a thick voice "I can hear the music at last"

Epilogue

They say that the oldfor a loving, restorative hand to bring it back to its forlory Trees and underbrush have crept across the once-shorn lainding slick, green tentacles around the peeling porch rails A thousand white

wildflowers grow stubbornly aone by

No one visits the old asylum anymore, no one has in years The o, scattering like dust in the wind, raising their children and their grandchildren in other, more modern places

But every now and then, the locals creep through the weeds to gaze at the old place, and even now, more than a century later, the house of the broken elcomes them Over the years, hter Some say it is the wind, others the restless spirits of the lunatics who once lived here

The children know, though, and the grandchildren, too This wild, lonely house by the sea is like no other, haunted not by demons or sorcerers or evil, but by the memory of a passionate, undeniable love

For when the night is dark and the tide is low and the wildflowers glow like scattered diaers in the air And the lovers hear it as they stand along the desolate shore, waiting for the moon