A young woman begged to stay in my house during a snowstorm. I thought I was saving a stranger from freezing. Then I heard her whisper on the phone, “Now I just need to wait until she falls asleep.”
I had been renting that little house for only two months.
It sat at the end of a narrow road outside Millhaven, the kind of place people drove past without noticing unless they were lost.
It had peeling blue shutters, a stubborn front door, and an attic that smelled like dust, cedar, and old secrets.
I moved there after my divorce because I wanted quiet.
That was what I told people.