Esther loaded the gun slowly, caressing each smooth cartridge as she slid it into the chamber. She toyed with the idea of leaving one chamber empty, to make the whole thing more of a gamble...one last chance to live...but in the end, the last bullet clicked firmly into place.

She lay the gun in her lap, it's dull metal sheen glowing eerily in the slanted rays of the late afternoon sun. Some part of her noticed how nicely it contrasted with the old fashioned black velvet gown she was wearing. She had found the dress in the back of her closet, a remnant of some festive costume party of ages past, and had decided it was appropriate for this last charade of her life. She had dressed slowly, carefully arranging her mass of silver-gray hair into a plain chignon, and had gone to fetch the gun.

The little 22 caliber pistol had been in the drawer by her bed, where John always insisted that she leave it. It angered him that she wouldn't keep it loaded, but then, so many things about her seemed to anger him lately. The forty years of their marriage had finally turned sour within him...fermented, like so much old sweet cider. She had tasted it on his breath these past months, when he had deigned to give her a small, cold kiss or two on the way out the door.

She had thought things might get better. When he had purchased the little house in the wood with the overgrown walled garden she had so loved, she had mistaken the gesture as one of forgiveness...of relenting. She knew it now for what it was...an assuaging of guilt. He had been planning to leave her "comfortably settled" before running off with the oh-so-much younger and prettier woman he had been seeing. He had departed for good this morning, heedless of her tears and begging. She had been left sobbing on the parlor floor, bereft of pride...totally humiliated.

It was ironic that he would leave her so shattered now, this soon after her greatest triumph. She settled back into the old wooden bench with an unconscious sigh, closing her eyes. She remembered a young, vivacious girl with dark, unruly hair and an unquenchable passion for life. That girl had been determined to be a journalist. Nothing else in life had mattered, until she met him. He had been in the navy...tall, strong and dark, with deep blue eyes like stormy seas in which she had promptly drowned. She left college to marry him. They traveled the world together, dancing, laughing and loving their way through the years. But always, in the back of her mind, the girl who was now a woman had longed to write.

He had retired early, and eventually found more and more outside interests that excluded her. "Men's clubs," he claimed, "golf games" or "hunting." Left alone, she had taken to writing again, her own interest in people and life pouring out onto clean, crisp pages of paper. It took months to get up the courage to send anything to publishers, and more months of collecting rejection slips before she was finally published...but it had been worth the wait. She was finally an author.

That night she had made a special candlelight supper. She couldn't wait for him to come home to share her triumph. At 2am, alone with the congealed remains of her cornish hens, and the molten mess of her fine beeswax candles, she had raised the last glass of wine to toast herself, and quietly passed out. He was full of guilty glances and apologies the next day. Her mind was unwilling to accept what her heart already knew, so she had forgiven him. She had chattered happily at him over the breakfast table, about their new future...the trips they would take, and the wonderful times they would share.

This morning, he had left her forever, and she had seen what she had refused to see all along. She was an old woman, with nothing to offer...nothing left to give. She had died when the first fine wrinkle had appeared in the corner of her eye, but hadn't had the sense to lie down.

She took the gun in her hands and caressed it, crooning softly to herself. She allowed herself one last look at the garden that had brought her so much happiness. There were the roses, climbing up onto the arbor trellis over the gate, waiting to burst forth into glorious bloom. "I was a rosebud once..." she said aloud with a soft, bitter laugh. And there...there was the old oak tree, under which she had written the best of her stories, with the lightning blasted snag of an even more ancient beech just to the right of it.

Ah...the snag. She sighed. It had been yet another bone of contention between them. Unsightly, twisted and gnarled, he had wanted it removed, torn out of the garden. She had refused, although she couldn't say why. She stared blankly at it now, watching as chickadees and woodpeckers flitted in and out of it's decaying heart. In the rapidly fading light it seemed larger somehow...stronger and more given to a semblance of life.

She found herself rising from the bench and walking slowly toward the jagged monolith. She stopped, startled, as a family of squirrels burst from within, playing one last game of tag before nightfall. Her eye was caught by a huge, feathery, delicately mottled moth fanning its wings slowly against the wrinkled shards of bark. Looking down, she caught a glimpse of a brightly spotted salamander scampering through the fantastically shaped fungus near the now defunct roots.

"Why, you're not really dead at all." she breathed. "You're full of life...of stories...you hold the world safely protected in your old wrinkled hide...a treasure for anyone who cares to share it with you."

She reached out with one hand, touching the rough, weathered wood tenderly. The gun slipped unnoticed from her fingers to the spring warmed earth below. Leaning gently against the snag, she began to weep...for an old life ended, and a new one just beginning.