Mason Sterling Drove to His Dead Wife’s Mountain House to Say Goodbye

Mason’s jaw tightened.

“That strategy will bury you,” the doctor said quietly. “Go to the cabin. Sit in the pain. Let the place say what it has to say.”

Mason stared at him.

Then Dr. Hale added, “Beatrice loved you. Do you honestly think she would want your life to end just because hers did?”

That question followed Mason all the way to Virginia.

And now here he was, with cookie crumbs on his porch and two mysterious little girls who had turned his private pilgrimage into something else.

Something urgent.

Something living.

The first crisis was the bath.

Mason discovered very quickly that caring for children involved a thousand practical problems no boardroom had ever prepared him for.

The girls were filthy. Not neglected-dirty in a vague storybook sense, but truly dirty—red clay on their calves, pine needles in their hair, fine grime settled into the folds of their necks and fingers. He found himself standing in the old bathroom with the claw-foot tub filling behind him, staring at them as if a set of instructions might materialize on the wall.