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 sank to the floor with the note in one hand and an old canvas in the other.

There are moments when grief changes shape. This was one of them. Until then it had mostly been subtraction. The absence of his voice, his body, his routines, his place at the table, his side of the bed. But here, in the studio, grief became revelation. He had not only loved me. He had been paying attention to the rooms inside me that I myself had abandoned.

I did not hear the cars at first.

Only when a shadow crossed the studio wall did I look up toward the long drive.

The black SUV was back.

And behind it, a silver sedan I recognized immediately.

Jenna.

My daughter stepped out first, wind catching her dark hair and pressing her coat against her long frame. For one impossible second, with the prairie light behind her and Joshua’s posture in the set of her shoulders, she looked so much like him it hurt.

Then I saw Robert approach her.

She smiled. Shook his hand. Allan did the same. David leaned in and said something that made her nod.

A coldness spread through me with terrifying speed.

They had gotten to her.