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.

I sat down hard in the chair nearest the desk.

“You never complained,” he continued. “Which is exactly why I knew how much it mattered. Some people shout when they lose what they love. You did something harder. You folded it away neatly and kept living. I always told myself that if the day came when I could give it back, I would.”

He glanced off-screen for a moment, toward the studio around him. Toward the room I was now standing inside.

“There’s one more thing. Check the cabinet beneath the window seat.”

I crossed the room almost without feeling my feet.

The cabinet door opened on a large archival box.

Inside were my paintings.

Not all of them, but enough to make the room blur. College work. Figure studies. Landscape attempts. Horse sketches. My final senior project. Pieces I had thought were lost in one move or another, or damaged, or left behind in storage units when life became too crowded for sentimental inventory. Joshua had saved them. Preserved them. Carried them through years I had spent assuming that part of myself had simply been misplaced beyond retrieval.

On top lay a note in his hand.

She’s still in there, Cat.