Inheritance
The road was rougher than she remembered - if she even remembered it at all. Truthfully, Hadley hadn’t been to this side of the family’s land since she was ten, and that memory was more photo than experience. Still, the tires crunched forward, the trees thickening around her, until the cabin came into view.
Old. Crooked. Still standing.
Just like the letter had promised.
She cut the engine. Stepped out into a stillness too big for words.
The air smelled like dust, pine, and faint ash. The wildfire to the west was miles away, but the sky was the color of old photographs. It made the whole place feel like it wasn’t quite part of the present. And maybe that was the point.
Hadley pulled her duffel from the trunk and stepped onto the porch. It creaked. So did the screen door, swinging loose on one hinge. She tested the knob - still worked - and let herself in.
The air inside was cool and dry. The living room was frozen in time: a plaid couch, a stone fireplace, a faded rug. A photo of her grandfather still sat on the mantle, his smile the same half-smirk she remembered.
She let her bag drop. Exhaled.
So this was it. The great reset. The last chapter of a story she hadn’t written.
It was supposed to be temporary - a few weeks at most, enough time to figure out what came next. She’d left Denver behind, and with it a job that had drained her dry, a relationship that hadn’t been real in months, and a life built more on momentum than desire.
But now, standing here with nothing but silence and woodsmoke in her lungs, she wondered: if everything that defined her was behind her… who was she now?
A soft knock snapped her out of it.
It came from the side window.
She moved slowly, uncertain, and looked out - and saw a man standing just beyond the fence line, holding what looked like a bag of tools.
He didn’t wave.
Just tipped his hat once, turned, and started walking back into the trees.