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.

Robert gave a bitter half laugh. “Strangers.”

“And whose fault is that?”

He did not answer.

Dr. Harmon cleared his throat. “From a medical standpoint, if these individuals can be located quickly, they should be informed at once.”

“Then inform them,” I said.

Allan looked at me with something new in his expression. Not liking. Not gratitude. Humility, perhaps, though the word sat awkwardly on him.

“And Jenna?” he asked.

“If the time ever comes that she needs to make that decision, she will do so with complete information and no manipulation. But you are not going to corner her into it through guilt or omission.”

Robert folded the letter carefully, almost reverently, and slid it back into the envelope.

“We’ll go,” he said.

As Ellis showed them out, I remained seated by the fire, listening to the door open and close and the vehicles start on the drive. Outside, snow fell in loose, slow strands over the pasture. Inside, the house seemed to inhale.

That evening I opened the day’s video from Joshua.

He appeared in the living room, filmed exactly a year earlier in the same winter light now fading outside my windows.