“Never go to the farm, Catherine. Promise me.”
Of all the things Joshua Mitchell ever asked of me in 24 years of marriage, that was the one request he made with a force I never forgot. My husband had been a gentle man by nature, an engineer with quiet hands, patient eyes, and a voice that rarely hardened unless something mattered deeply.
He never tried to control where I went, what I did, or whom I loved. He trusted me almost extravagantly. Except when it came to the farm.
Maple Creek Farm in Alberta, Canada, had existed in our marriage like a locked room inside Joshua’s past. He mentioned his childhood there only in fragments: a hard father, brothers who mocked him, a horse he loved, winters that felt endless, and the day he left at 18 swearing never to return. Whenever curiosity got the better of me and I asked if we might visit someday, his face changed.
“Never go to the farm, Catherine,” he would say. “Promise me.”
So I promised. Then Joshua died.
A heart attack took him without warning, or so I believed then. One ordinary afternoon, the man I had built my adult life around was simply gone. At 52, I became a widow with a bitter 27-year-old daughter, Jenna, a hollow space in my chest where certainty used to live, and a thousand questions I had not known to ask while he was alive.
Two weeks after the funeral, I sat in the wood-paneled office of Joshua’s attorney, Mr. Winters, while death was translated into paperwork. “There’s one more item,” he said.
He slid a small box across the desk. Inside lay an antique brass key attached to a maple leaf keychain and a sealed envelope with my name written in Joshua’s precise handwriting. “What is this?” I asked.
“Your husband purchased a property in Alberta 3 years ago. According to his instructions, you were only to be informed of its existence after his passing. The deed has transferred to your name.
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