My husband, Julian, had spent two years failing at one venture after another — auto parts, day-trading, a logistics partnership, import deals that always needed just a little more startup capital.
The money never came back.
But I kept paying. Rent, groceries, utilities, even his credit card debts.
There was only one thing I refused to give up.
My grandmother's cottage in Birchwater, up in the northern lake country — a modest place with a fruit orchard and a screened porch where I'd spent every childhood summer.
My grandmother Clara had left it to me in her will.
For months, Julian had been pushing me to sell.
"We could get $450,000 for it," he'd say. "Why let it sit empty?"
"Because it was my grandmother's."
"Memories don't pay the bills, Morgan."
I always ended the conversation right there.
A week after the bus, I came home to something stranger than any argument.
Julian was waiting — clean-shaven, wearing cologne, in a new shirt.