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.

Not in anger. Not in one of those sharp, household arguments that leave a bruise in the air long after the words are gone. Joshua had never been that kind of man. He was steady, careful with his voice, careful with mine, careful even with silence. But whenever the farm came up, something in him changed. His face would close the way old houses do before a storm. His shoulders would go stiff. His eyes, usually so kind they made strangers trust him within minutes, would go cold and distant, as if he were looking past me and straight into something I could not see.

“Never go there, Catherine,” he had told me more than once over the course of our twenty-four-year marriage. “Promise me.”

And because it was one of the few things he had ever asked of me with real force behind it, I had promised.