The Cabin - Jasinda Wilder Page 0,41

at the bottom of a bottle, and then dragged your pieces together such that you could go back to work, and eventually just found enough distance from the whole thing that you feel like you’ve healed as much as you ever will.

And, like I said, I want better for Nadia.

She deserves life. Real LIFE, not just a macabre, zombie half-life. Not just working till exhaustion kills emotion, not just trudging one grief-stricken step after another through a cardboard approximation of life, from workday to workday.

I want her to live, Nathan. But she won’t know how. Like you, she’ll be stuck in her grief.

She’ll mourn me, and her mourning will consume her. She won’t see the stars at night. She won’t see a sunrise, or a sunset.

She won’t know the comfort of an embrace.

She will go into mourning, and never return from that dark land.

What does this have to do with Tomas Anton whom I assume just left your home? What does this have to do with a cabin in the woods?

Go fishing, Nathan.

Pack some clothing, turn down the job offer you have waiting. Bring your carving and whittling tools. Drive to the address below, and stay there. Fish. Whittle. Watch sunrises. Drink coffee and watch fish jump.

Live.

Take the time for you. You need it. You deserve it. You’re a damn good man, Nathan Fischer. The best. I enjoyed our talks over Scotch more than I think I ever really let on.

But as you fish and whittle and live, ask yourself one question. Would Lisa, your dear departed wife, want you to live as you’ve been living? Alone, and lonely? Or would she want you to find happiness?

Really ask yourself that question.

When you get to the cabin, you’ll find something else I’ve left for you. Something even more important than the cabin or this letter.

Try to trust me.

Yours,

The Ghost of Adrian Bell

P.S.: Sorry. Gallows humor. I couldn’t resist.

I look at a five-by-eight notecard with two keys taped to it, one a house key, the other I’m not sure of—it’s small, with a round head and a simple cut. For a lockbox, maybe. Below the keys is an address, which a Google search shows is, as Mr. Anton indicated, way up in the Appalachians.

I consider.

But not for long.

Because goddamn it, but he’s right. I’ve not been living, just staying alive. Moping through one day after another. Waiting to age out of life, maybe.

I don’t need to sit on a lake to know the answer to his question, either. I can hear Lisa in my head right now, and I think she’s been screaming this at me for years.

Quit moping, ya dumb lunk! Yeah, I loved you, you loved me. Yeah, I fuckin’ died. She had a potty mouth, my Lisa. If I was alive, I’d expect to be your one and only. But I ain’t. I’m dead. Dead and gone, and you buried me, and now you gotta live. LIVE, motherfucker. Be happy.

Fuck.

I pack—I don’t need much. Some jeans, some T-shirts, some sweaters, some underwear and socks, the usual. My old leather roll-up case of antique woodworking tools. My fishing supplies—tackle box, a few fishing rods, waders, net, all that stuff. I toss it all in the backseat of my truck, along with a few things in a cooler, and I head out.

This cabin is hours away; it’s just now ten at night, but fuck it. I don’t sleep much anymore anyway.

My tires crunch on gravel, and then the gravel gives way to grass. I pull to a stop, and my headlights illuminate cattails waving in a breeze, dark water rippling against the shore, a small dock, wood planks and four posts, with a tin fishing boat tied to the post at the end of the dock.

Moths swirl madly in the twin spears of my headlights.

To my left, I can make out the small bulk of a building. My headlights only cast the dimmest glow on it, but I know it is made of logs, and I can see a few steps leading up to a porch. The rest is in shadow.

I shut off my engine, step out. Stand in the cool of a late summer night in the Georgia mountains. Crickets sing. A frog goes rrrrrrUPP in the distance. I look up—stars in an endless multitude, outshone only by a bright silver half-moon.

A bat flitters across the moon, chasing moths.

I take a long, slow, deep breath. My chest aches—I don’t know why.

Now that I’ve opened my mind to it—or maybe my