"Welcome home, Maeve."
She didn't answer. She stood on her father's broken step with the lake going gold behind her and the For Sale sign breathing in the wind, and she understood that the hardest thing about the next eight weeks would not be the roof, or the wiring, or the foundation drinking the water.
It would be him, knowing all the rooms of her she had spent twelve years locking.
🤖 The author declared this story as written with the help of AI.