Chapter 6 - The Sanctuary of Soil
The silence of the farmhouse was a living thing,
dense and heavy with the memories of a man who preferred the company of wind and timber.
I stood in the center of Arthur’s kitchen,
the floorboards groaning softly under my weight like an old friend offering a greeting.
The air here didn't smell like mothballs or the bitter scent of Harper’s expensive perfumes;
it smelled of dried hay,
old pine,
and the honest dust of a life well-lived.
I had left the city house behind,
leaving it in the hands of a property management firm to be scrubbed of the lingering ghosts of Mason’s greed.
I didn't want the smell of his lies in my nostrils anymore.
I sat at the heavy oak table,
my fingers tracing the deep gouges and scars in the wood.
Arthur had carved his life into this land,
and now,
it was my turn to do the same.
I looked out the window at the five hundred acres that rolled toward the horizon,
a sea of green and gold under the afternoon sun.
It was overwhelming.
It was terrifying.
And it was mine.
The phone in my pocket buzzed,
a sharp intrusion into the stillness.
I didn't have to look at the screen to know it was Mason.
He had been calling from different numbers for forty-eight hours,
alternating between screaming rages and pathetic,
sobbing apologies.
I let it go to voicemail,
watching the red light blink like a warning signal.
I had already changed my number once,
but he was persistent,
driven by the desperation of a man who had realized his golden goose had grown talons.
I stood up and walked to the pantry,
finding it stocked with jars of preserved peaches and green beans that Arthur had put up last summer.
He was gone,
but he was still feeding me.
I took a jar of peaches to the porch,
sitting in the rocker and watching the shadows grow long across the pastures.
I thought about the night Mason was born,
how I had held that tiny,
wrinkled body and promised him the world.
I had kept that promise.
I had given him everything until I had nothing left but the skin on my bones and the roof over my head.
And the moment he thought he could take those too,
he had reached for the knife.
The betrayal wasn't just in the words I heard through the window;
it was in the years of casual cruelty I had ignored because I was a mother.
I had taught him that my love was a bottomless well,
and he had decided to poison it just to see if the water would still be sweet.
I took a bite of a peach,
the syrup thick and cloying in my throat.
Tomorrow,
the contractors would arrive to start the repairs.
Tomorrow,
the security team would install the cameras and the reinforced gates.
But tonight,
I would sit in the dark and remember the woman I was before I became someone’s servant.
I was Eleanor Brooks.
I was a sister.
I was a widow.
I was a landowner.
And I was finally,
May you like
magnificently,
alone.
