In less than three months, I went from being a retired builder with a fully paid home to a widower carrying his life in a single duffel bag.
The only place left for me was a cabin Eleanor had inherited years earlier from her Aunt June, tucked in the San Juan Mountains near Lake City, Colorado. Eleanor and I used to talk about fixing it up once we had time, but time never arrived. When I got there, a skin of snow covered the sagging porch, one shutter hung at an angle, and the roof looked like it was one storm away from surrender. Inside, the cabin smelled like mildew, pine rot, and old dust. The woodstove smoked badly. The pipes worked only when they felt inclined to cooperate.
Still, it was shelter. At least for the moment, it was mine.
I spent the first two weeks hauling junk outside, patching split frames, and trying not to replay the sight of Daniel staring at me across a courtroom. On the fourteenth day, I removed an old landscape painting from the wall in the back bedroom so I could clean the mold spreading behind it. Taped to the drywall was a large manila envelope, browned with age, my name written on the front in Eleanor’s unmistakable handwriting.
Martin,
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