The place Bessa had called home for the past few years was the kind of rural paradise that poets wrote about and then immediately left to go back to the city.
It sat at the end of a dirt road that turned to mud in the spring and dust in the summer, which meant it was only accessible comfortably about two months out of the year.
The cottage itself was small, crooked, and so thoroughly patched with mismatched wood that it looked less like a house and more like a quilt that had given up.
The garden, however, was magnificent. A riot of vegetables and herbs and flowers that grew furiously, of plants that knew they were the only thing standing between their caretaker and starvation.
Bessa had loved it. She had loved the leaky roof and the way the front door only locked if you lifted it just so. She had loved the way the winter wind rattled through the walls too.
