The address in Everett’s letter was the lake house. He had asked me to go there, to stop making room in other people’s homes and finally live in the place that had always been ours. His words stayed with me as I packed. He wrote that he had spent his career recording lines other people wanted forgotten, but the one line he could never leave unrecorded was the one around his own wife. In the spring, I moved to Marren Lake, where everything was cold, gray, and strangely peaceful.

Wesley was furious. He said I was being spiteful and letting a grieving old man manipulate me. He claimed I was punishing him over $748 and a few dock boards. But beneath his anger was something harder to ignore. He had already begun treating my property as if it belonged to him. Then Bertram called and told me he had discovered something Wesley never expected me to find. Click continue reading below