Identity

“It’s twenty thousand below asking price, so they’re lowballing you. I suggest we counter with—”

“Just take the offer.” She sat at the table on a Sunday evening, knowing people had gone through the house yet again while she’d nursed coffee in a café. Gone through, judged, criticized, imagined what they’d change.

“Morgan, I know this hasn’t been easy for you, but with settlement fees, that offer won’t cover what you owe. Let me do what I do. Let me counter.”

“All right.” She stared into the bowl of canned soup she’d tried to eat. “But I’m giving you permission to take the offer if they balk at your counter. To take their counter to the counter if they make one. I need to move on.”

“Understood. I’ll get back to you.”

“Thanks.”

Pushing the soup aside, she pulled over the old laptop Sam had given her. No arguments, Morgan, she remembered him saying. Just take the damn thing.

She’d taken the damn thing and now did some calculations.

Belinda the Realtor had it right, of course. The offer on the table wouldn’t cover her debt. But instead of owing about three hundred thousand, she’d owe roughly seven.

She could live with that. She was currently living with a lot worse.

Belinda called back. “The buyers are willing to split the difference. I’d like to counter.”

“Take it, please. Just take it. It gets me out from under.”

“I understand, but I hate for you to settle for less than it’s worth.”

“Belinda, a woman was murdered in this house. We both know that lowers the value to most buyers.”

“You deserve better.”

“I’ll take what I can get. How soon can we settle?”

“Thirty days.”

“Okay, I’ll be ready. Thanks for this. I mean it.”

She sat back, shut her eyes, and realized she felt nothing but relief.



* * *



Thirty days moved fast. She gave her bosses her notice, helped train her replacements. Since she’d have no need for them, she sold or gave away the rest of her furniture, the contents of her kitchen cabinets, even her cleaning supplies.

No matter how she’d braced for it, saying goodbye proved harder than she’d imagined.

On the morning of the settlement, when she locked the empty house for the last time, the relief she fought to cling to dropped into misery.

She’d cry later. She promised herself a champion-level crying jag, but later.

With the paperwork complete, the new owners beaming, she comforted herself that someone would love what could no longer be hers.

Maybe they’d take that wall down, and build a sweet little front porch.

She walked out of the settlement office with a check that totaled hardly more than two weeks’ pay. Since it seemed best not to think about how thrilled she’d been when she’d walked out of that same office as a homeowner, she blocked it out.

She got into Nina’s car with her suitcases already loaded, and drove north.

When she’d made her annual trek to Vermont for Christmas—except this past one, which she’d spent alone—she’d taken the train.

A happy little trip, she thought now, with her single suitcase, bag of gifts, and all that holiday cheer.

The drive from the outskirts of Baltimore to Westridge, Vermont, would take her a solid eight hours according to the GPS on her phone.

She hoped to make it without an overnight stop. And with bigger hope that Nina’s car would make it.

She drove away from the first whispers of spring and into the firm grip of winter, with its shivering trees and a quick squall of sleet.

After skirting Philadelphia, then New York, she stopped to gas up, stretch her legs. In the parking lot she ate half the PB&J she’d packed and watched a couple walk a big, curly haired dog.

A dog had been in her long-range plans, she remembered, after she’d established her own business. Not a big dog, she thought, but not one of those pocket jobs either. A nice sensible-size dog who’d curl at her feet when she did paperwork and romp around the backyard—no digging in the garden. A sweet and quiet-natured dog she’d raise from a frisky puppy.

She saw her imaginary dog stretched out on her finished back deck to soak up the summer sun. Sitting patiently in her open, cheerful kitchen while she filled his food and water bowls. Greeting her with wagging tail when she came home from work.

She’d need a dog door, of course, leading out from the kitchen to the deck and yard. And …

She caught herself, closed her eyes.

“Stop. Just stop. That’s done.”

Appetite gone, she wrapped the second half of the sandwich and continued on her way.

She drove through Connecticut, into Massachusetts. Snow, white and thick, covered everything on either side of the highway, and the sky—gray as lead—surely held more. Wind streamed down from the rising hills, sent snow flying, drifting.

Traffic slowed to the point she felt herself drifting like the snow. So she pulled off again, walked in the frigid air. With light leaching out of the day, she nearly gave in.

A decent motel, a warm, quiet space, sleep.

She bought a large coffee instead and texted her mother she’d arrive in a few hours.

We’ll be here. Got a big pot of beef stew waiting. Drive safe.

She added a heart emoji, and feeling obligated, Morgan answered with another.

Ignoring the signs of lodging, she crossed into Vermont and the Green Mountains.

There was beauty here—maybe frozen at this time, but beauty. She couldn’t deny it, and had always enjoyed it on her holiday visits, her short childhood trips in summer.

Mountains and forests and valleys, snow drenched, made a winter painting, all Americana. She drove and wound through the dream of it, and felt something nearly release when the moon—just a slice of it—broke through the clouds to drop its blue light on the white.

She’d hiked the forest with her grandfather on rare and all-too-short summer visits. He knew every trail. It struck her that she missed him more here as she drove closer to where he’d lived his life than she did anywhere else.

He’d listened to her dreams.

To be fair, so had her grandmother and her mother. Though her mother had always seemed just a little distracted. But Pa had listened, as if nothing else existed in that moment but her words and wishes.

She thought of him now as she traveled through his world and remembered the little things he’d taught her.

How to hammer a nail without banging her thumb. How to use a compass. How to recognize a deer print, a bear’s. How to fish, something she did not for pleasure but just to spend time with him.

He wouldn’t be here this time, she realized, and that cold, hard fact ached in her heart.

She pushed on, veering west with the road out of the forest, through the towns, their outskirts, the villages and theirs.

And at last, at last, nearly ten hours after she’d begun, she came to the sturdy old Tudor riding its slope of snow with lights shining in the windows, smoke curling from its pair of chimneys.