The Cabin I Built With My Own Hands
The first snowflakes hit my windshield somewhere past Boulder, fat and lazy, melting on contact. November in the Rockies meant unpredictable weather, but I’d driven this route enough times to know which curves tightened in ice and which stayed clear. The highway climbed steadily, leaving the last gas station and civilization behind as pine forests pressed in from both sides.
I needed this. Three weeks of back-to-back depositions, client meetings that ran past midnight, conference calls with Tokyo that started at four in the morning. My law practice had grown beyond anything I’d imagined when I’d hung my shingle thirty years ago, but growth came with costs.
The costs showed in my reflection—lines around my eyes that hadn’t been there last year, a tightness in my jaw that never fully released anymore. The cabin was supposed to be my answer to that. My sanctuary.
The place where I could be Helen Garrett, not Attorney Garrett, not Mom, not anyone’s anything except myself. I’d bought the land twenty-three years ago, right after the divorce. Five acres of mountain wilderness with a creek running through it and views that made your chest ache.
I’d hired a contractor for the foundation and framing, but I’d done most of the finish work myself—learned to lay tile and install windows, figured out plumbing through trial and error and a lot of YouTube videos. Every board, every nail, every decision had been mine. It was the first thing in my life that belonged to me alone.
I’d told exactly three people I was coming up this weekend: my assistant, my neighbor who checked my mail, and my son David. A quick text Thursday night: Heading to the cabin for the weekend. Need to unplug.
Love you. He’d responded with a thumbs up emoji. Standard David—affectionate but efficient with words.
So when I rounded the final curve and saw four vehicles parked in my driveway, my first thought was that I’d taken a wrong turn. But no—there was the boulder with the quartz vein that caught the light, there was the old fence post I kept meaning to replace, there was my cabin with smoke curling from the chimney. And there, unmistakably, was David’s black Audi.
I parked behind a silver SUV I didn’t recognize and sat for a moment, hands still on the wheel, trying to construct a narrative that made sense. Maybe David had decided to surprise me. Maybe he’d brought his girlfriend Melissa and some friends for the weekend, not realizing I’d be here.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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