Up on the roof, he stepped carefully onto the ledge and sat down next to the stone gargoyle on the corner of the building, blinking in the light of the rising sun. Anyone who saw him might suppose he was considering throwing himself to his death, but the notion was ridiculous. He had never felt more alive.

He was forty-two, and today, for the first time, he felt he really understood his life: the politics of the office, his marriage, his own desires, all of it. In the crisp morning air, he recognized that the source of this new perspective and clarity was the death of his mother, coming as it had so soon after the death of his son. Sure, the path had been rocky, and the journey had ripped him apart, but it had reassembled him too, left him something bigger than he was before, something stronger. He felt, for the first time in a long time, invincible.

At that moment, with a rocky grinding noise, the gargoyle turned its head toward him. A stone hand reached out and give him a push.

They would say he jumped.