“Never go to the farm, Catherine. Promise me.”
Those words, spoken with an uncharacteristic intensity that had startled me, were one of the few absolute demands my husband, Joshua, ever made during our twenty-four years of marriage. For all those years, I had respected his wishes without question, even when a deep curiosity gnawed at me.
The “farm” was a ghost, a shadowy place from a Canadian childhood he rarely mentioned, a property he had fled at eighteen and seemingly never looked back on.
But now, Joshua was gone. A sudden, violent heart attack had stolen him from me, leaving a hollow space in my chest where certainty used to live. At fifty-two, I was a widow with a grieving, bitter daughter and a future that felt like an uncharted, starless sea.
“Mrs.
Mitchell?” The voice of Mr. Winters, Joshua’s attorney, pulled me from the depths of my thoughts. We were in his wood-paneled office, two weeks after the funeral, the raw finality of death now reduced to a stack of paperwork and the scratch of a pen.
“There’s one more item.”
He slid a small, lacquered box across the polished surface of his desk. Inside, nestled on a bed of black velvet, lay an antique brass key attached to a simple maple leaf keychain. Beside it was a sealed envelope with my name written in Joshua’s precise, familiar handwriting.
“What is this?” I asked, the heavy key feeling cold and foreign in my palm.
“Your husband purchased a property in Alberta, Canada, three years ago,” Mr.
Winters explained, adjusting his glasses. “According to his instructions, you were only to be informed of its existence after his passing. The deed has been transferred to your name.
All taxes are paid for the next five years.”
The words didn’t compute. A property in Canada? “It’s called Maple Creek Farm,” he continued.
“Apparently, it was his childhood home, though the deed shows it changed hands several times before he repurchased it.”
The farm. The one forbidden place.
“Mrs. Mitchell, there’s something else,” Mr.
Winters said, his voice lowering conspiratorially. “The property has become quite valuable recently. Significant oil deposits were discovered in the region about eighteen months ago.
Your husband declined multiple offers from energy companies.”
My head spun. Joshua, my practical, methodical Joshua, had never mentioned oil, a secret farm, or any large financial transactions. We’d lived comfortably, but we were hardly wealthy.
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