More importantly, she was the only person from my old life who never looked at me with embarrassment.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I’m very sorry,” Caroline replied. “Eleanor passed away four days ago. It was her heart. She died peacefully in her sleep at the lakehouse.”

My legs gave out before my mind caught up, and I sat on the edge of the bed.

The room suddenly felt much smaller—the water stain across the ceiling, the dented mini-fridge, my muddy work boots by the door. For nine years, everything I owned had fit inside that single room, and now it felt as though the walls had closed around me.

“Mr. Hayes?”

“I’m here.”

“There’s also the matter of her estate. Eleanor named you as her sole beneficiary.”

For a moment, I thought grief had distorted what I heard.

“I’m sorry?”

“She left you Birchwood,” Caroline continued. “The eleven-acre property on Lake Marlin, including the main house, the dock, two boats, and the bait-and-tackle business she operated on the south shore.”

A dry laugh escaped me.

“That can’t be right.”

“It is.”

“She had nieces. Friends. Half the town adored her.”

“Yes,” Caroline said softly. “And she chose you.”

After the call ended, I remained sitting there in the gray morning light, my phone still in my hand.

Birchwood.

Even hearing the name stirred something deep inside me.

I remembered racing barefoot down the dock while Eleanor shouted that I’d crack my skull open. I remembered skipping stones until sunset as our father called us in for supper. I remembered the scent of pine, lake water, fried perch, and my mother’s lemon soap. Back then, family was something you leaned on because you never imagined it could collapse beneath you.

Nine years earlier, I had learned otherwise.

At fifty-nine, after thirty-one years driving long-haul trucks, my back finally quit on me. Two ruptured discs. Surgery that helped—for a while. Then a doctor with sympathetic eyes explained there were limits to what my body could endure. Disability payments were small and slow. Medical bills were neither. Within a year, my savings disappeared, my tools were sold, my truck was mortgaged, and I lost the modest house on Sycamore Street that I had spent twenty years paying for.

It wasn’t fancy.

Two bedrooms. A cramped kitchen. A maple tree that clogged the gutters every fall.

But it had been home.

I knew every squeaky floorboard and every stubborn window. When Rebecca was eight, I’d painted her bedroom lavender because she once told me white walls reminded her of hospitals.