The Cabin - Jasinda Wilder Page 0,55

am standing beside my car, just taking in the fact that I’m here and that Adrian chose this place for me. He let me spend a year alone, mourning, before telling me about it. But he knew me. He knew I wouldn’t have come before now. He knew I’d need this now.

I mount the steps to the porch, which is bordered by crooked lengths of tree limbs in two rows fastened to the upright posts, with two small steps up. You could sit out here at sunset, lean on the top rail…stare out at the lake as the sun stains it on the way down behind the trees.

On the porch, I feel my heart start hammering. He’s not in there, I know that. It will be empty. A simple rustic cabin in the woods, a place to get away for a while. To rest. To try and heal. To do as he said—start learning how to move on.

The door is made of wide, rough-hewn planks secured with black wrought-iron straps at top and bottom, and another plank running diagonally from top left to bottom right. Brass doorknob, tarnished, key-scratched. Leaded panes of glass, four-square, old glass, bubbled and distorted. I can’t really see inside through the glass, other than vague shapes and patches of darkness.

My hand shakes as I stare at the small brass key nestled in the palm of my hand and just stare at it. As if something momentous will happen when I put the key in the lock.

What do you want from me, Adrian?

Why am I here?

How am I supposed to move on? How am I supposed to…to live, without you?

He wants me to try. So…try I will.

I unlock the door, push it open. The hinges squeak softly. I step in. I’m prepared for, well, the kind of thing you’d expect from a hundred-plus-year-old cabin on a lake an hour from anything like real civilization. Dusty, rustic at best. Old and uncomfortable and plain. Colorless, everything decorated with animal heads and horns and the iconography of the nineteenth century.

But what I find is inside is not that…at all.

I find Adrian’s fingerprints all over the inside. His knowledge of me.

Not an animal head to be found, not a single set of antlers, no stuffed fish or raccoons or foxes, much less those stupid “jackalope” things. I close the door behind me and put my back against it, hand over my mouth as I struggle with an onslaught of emotion at what Adrian has given me.

There are large windows on either side of the door, letting in buckets of natural light, making the cabin feel airy and light. The fireplace is on the right-hand wall, a towering expanse of round stones each roughly the size of my head. A thick mantle runs over top, deep, square, stained dark.

On the mantle is a single framed photo: my favorite of him—he’s at his desk, leaned precariously backward with his feet up on the corner of the desk, his laptop on his thighs, a mug in one hand, his favorite mug, with levels marked ranging from “don’t even THINK about talking to me” at the top, “nope, not yet” below that, “still shushy time” below that, and at the very bottom “okay, NOW you can talk.” He’s wearing his blue-light-blocking glasses, and he’s grinning at me, laughing at some dumb joke I told him to break his concentration. It’s my favorite photo of him because it captures the essence of everything that is my Adrian. His joy, his humor, his deep, abiding addiction to strong, bold, single-origin coffee, his dedication to his craft.

There is a couch facing the fireplace, and it’s bohemian and chaotic and colorful. White cloth cushions, wood armrests, covered in knit throw blankets and a one-of-a-kind pillows: one made from an old flannel shirt with a single huge wooden button in the middle, and one made from thick pile purple shag carpet, and another with a wild red and yellow and green zebra stripe pattern. Rugs line the polished wood floors, a profusion of various patterns and styles all overlapping. An industrial-style floor lamp stands beside the couch and it’s made from old copper piping decorated at sporadic intervals with antique hosepipe knobs, the lampshade a bowl of hammered copper, with a long, dangling pull chain and an Edison bulb. Overhead is a chandelier that is clearly a handmade work of art, crafted from sections of stained glass in a brilliant explosion of colors, almost an imitation of a