I climbed into Nick’s car and waved goodbye. The finality of it all rose over me. I was leaving. My vision went dark, the world stopped. But then it passed, and I was all right.

___

Five hours later, Nick turned off Highway One and onto an unmarked gravel drive. He avoided potholes for a quarter mile, and slowed as we approached a wide wooden gate.

“For the goats,” he said.

He stopped the car, opened the door to climb out, and left the engine running.

It was just before eight o’clock and the sky was pale pink, and I watched through the windshield glass as he unlatched the gate and pulled one side open, then crossed in front of the car to open the other. Behind him was a field and a big wooden barn. Some moss-covered boulders. Two goats munching grass.

Here I was.

I had made it.

And then he was back in the car, and we rolled forward. When he stopped again, I said, “I’ll get it,” and I stepped onto the farm for the first time. It was salty and muddy and cold—even in June—and I breathed in its newness as I swung the gates closed and latched them shut. When I turned back to the car, I could see a row of small cabins, and past them, a sprawling farmhouse with its lights on, all white and three stories, something from a picture book or an old movie, nothing like any house I’d ever set foot in.

“See that over there?” Nick asked, pointing to a curved, white tent. “That’s the flower tunnel. Julia’s famous around here for her flowers.”

“I can’t wait to see everything.”

He parked midway down the gravel drive, at the closest point to the cabins, and we walked across the field, Nick with my suitcase, me with my backpack and duffel. The cabins were identical from the outside—each of them tiny, more sheds than houses—with small front windows and old brass doorknobs. Some muffled words followed by laughter came from inside the first cabin as we passed it. About twenty paces later we reached the second, which was silent and still. And then after another twenty steps, he stopped in front of the last one.

“Welcome home,” Nick said.

He made no move to open the door, so I turned the knob myself. I expected the inside to be dark, but it wasn’t. A skylight cut through the middle of the ceiling, casting the room in the same pink glow as outside.

Nick tucked my suitcase just inside the doorway. My shoes were muddy from the field, so I set my backpack and duffel inside without crossing the threshold. I saw a rug, a twin bed with a wrought-iron frame, a writing desk with a chair, a wood-burning stove, and a stack of cut wood.