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.

The name landed in the room like an object dropped from a great height.

I stared at the key in my palm. Heavy. Cold. Real.

“The farm,” I said, though I had not meant to speak aloud.

Mr. Winters adjusted his glasses. “You knew of it?”

“I knew it existed. Or existed once. It was his childhood home.” My voice came out distant, detached, as if someone else were answering. “He told me almost nothing about it except that I was never to go there.”

Mr. Winters hesitated, and I could tell there was more.

“What?” I asked.

He leaned back slightly. “Mrs. Mitchell, there is another complicating factor. The property has increased significantly in value over the last eighteen months due to oil discoveries in the surrounding region. Your husband declined several purchase offers.”

My first thought was not about money. It was simpler and stranger than that.

Joshua had gone back.

Somehow, sometime, while we were making dinner and paying electric bills and attending district curriculum meetings and pretending middle age was as stable as it looked from the outside, my husband had gone back to the one place he had forbidden even me to see.

He had bought it. Restored it, apparently. Kept it secret. Hidden it so completely that even now, dead and folded into paperwork, he was still capable of changing the shape of my world with one more revelation.

“How?” I asked quietly. “How did he afford it?”

“I cannot speak in detail about his private finances beyond what is contained in the estate documents,” Mr. Winters said, which was the lawyer’s way of saying he absolutely could, but would not. “I can tell you he arranged matters lawfully and meticulously. There is no issue there.”

“Why keep it from me?”

His expression softened. “I suspect the letter may answer that better than I can.”

My fingers shook as I broke the seal.

My dearest Catherine,

If you are reading this, then I left too soon, and for that I am more sorry than these words will ever be able to say. There is more I should have told you. More I wanted to tell you. But some truths felt too heavy while I was still asking you to live beside them.

The farm is yours now.

I know I spent years making you promise never to go there. I am releasing you from that promise. More than that, I am asking you to go once before you decide what to do with it. Please do not sell it until you have seen it with your own eyes.