My husband had spent years warning me never to set foot on that farm. So after he passed away and the lawyer handed me the key, saying that from now on the place belonged to me, I was ready to sell it right away and put everything behind me. But before making my final decision, I still wanted to see it once for myself. When the door opened, I finally understood why, all those years, he had never wanted me to set foot there.

Two weeks after the funeral, I sat in the office of Joshua’s attorney, a careful, silver-haired man named Richard Winters who smelled faintly of cedar and old paper. The building was in downtown St. Paul, one of those red-brick structures with narrow windows and a lobby that had not changed its carpeting since the Reagan years. Outside, leaves skittered along the sidewalk in the first real snap of autumn. Inside, the world had been reduced to signatures and legal language and the humiliating bureaucracy of death.

Mr. Winters had already guided me through the will, the accounts, the house, the life insurance, the practical shape of loss. I had signed my name so many times that morning it no longer looked like my own. At some point, I realized I had been gripping my pen as if it might keep me anchored to something.

“There is one more item,” he said at last.

His tone changed. Only slightly, but enough for me to notice. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and brought out a small wooden box, the kind jewelers used for watches or cuff links. He set it between us with unusual care.

Inside was an antique brass key attached to a maple leaf keychain darkened with age. Beneath it lay a sealed envelope with my name written in Joshua’s precise handwriting.

The sight of his hand on paper hit me harder than I expected. It was not even a long note. Just my name. Catherine. Still, my throat tightened as if that one word contained the whole weight of our life.

“What is this?” I asked.

Mr. Winters folded his hands. “Your husband purchased property in Alberta, Canada, approximately three years ago. Per his written instructions, you were only to be informed of its existence in the event of his death.”

I looked at him for a moment, certain I had misheard.

“A property?”

“Yes.”

“In Canada?”

He nodded once. “The deed has been transferred to your name. All taxes and maintenance expenses are prepaid for the next five years.”

Joshua and I had lived carefully. Comfortably, yes, but carefully. He had been an engineer, methodical to the core, and I had spent decades teaching literature to sixteen-year-olds who believed Shakespeare existed to ruin their afternoons. We had saved. We had planned. We had paid off our mortgage and helped Jenna through college. But we were not the kind of people who secretly bought foreign property on a whim.

“What property?”

“It is called Maple Creek Farm.”