We would sit together in two wooden chairs, often without speaking, our hands resting close enough to touch.
We had built something beautiful there.
My son, Michael, knew what the property meant to me.
He had grown up on that land. He knew every tree, every trail, every hidden place where he and his sister had played as children. He knew which porch board squeaked, where his mother planted daffodils every spring, and where we had buried the family dog after seventeen faithful years.
Yet after Margaret was gone, something in Michael changed.
At first, the change was so subtle that I barely noticed it. It was as if a switch had slowly been turned, and the son I had raised—the boy I taught to ride a bicycle, bait a fishing hook, and stand back up after falling—began to become someone I no longer recognized.
It started with small comments.
