CORINNE WILDE - PRESENT DAY, 2025
Foxglove is a memory box, so filled to the brim with the past I sometimes feel as if there’s no room for the present. My mother grew up here, and her mother, and hers. Centuries of Wilde women have survived on this land and within these walls from the moment it was built.
This is what I tell myself—that others have done this before me, and that I can do it too—as I pull up next to the quiet, old cabin the day after my divorce is finalized.
Despite Mom paying a neighbor to keep the land tidy, the yard is overgrown in patches near the cabin, like he’s been skipping the weed-eating. I guess he thought no one would notice either way, and until now, he’d be right.
The old cedar tree is still here, and that rusted mailbox still stands—now even more covered than I remember by the goldenrod and pokeweed trying to swallow it up.
I put the car in park with a heavy breath, bracing myself.
A glance at the back seat tells me Taylor is glaring out the window with her AirPods in, still angry with me.
When her blue eyes lock with mine, I put on my bravest smile. “Home sweet home.”
She doesn’t bother arguing with me or pointing out that this place is not and has never been our home. Instead, she rolls her eyes and shoves open her door, stepping out of the car.
The sweet scent of lavender hits my nose in an instant, and the tall meadow grass dances in the breeze. The stone cabin remains. Untouched, unbothered. If the years of emptiness have affected it in any way, it’s unclear. It looks just as I remember it, and my throat feels itchy at the thought.
Though I try not to look, not to reminisce too hard, my eyes find the willow tree off in the distance, and I nod softly to myself. To her.I’m here.
“Mom, unlock the trunk,” Taylor says, hitting the back of our vehicle with her palm.
I blink away the fog over my eyes, getting down to business. This is not the time for nostalgia. We have things to do. Together, we unload our luggage. What luggage we brought with us, anyway. The movers are on their way with our things, but a good bit of our stuff will be stored at the old house with Lewis until I figure out something more permanent.
As picturesque as this place may be, as much as I loved it once, I can’t argue with Taylor’s silence. Foxglove isn’t our home. It isn’t the place for a teenager, out here in the woods all alone. I’ve taken her away from everything she knows and loves, and the guilt of that is stronger than any attachment I once had to this place.
Still, moments later, I turn the key in the brass lock and push open the door with a bright grin, hoping that if Foxglove gets a sense of my happiness, it will get on board with making itself a happy home for us.
Lord knows it would be the first happy home we’ve had in a long time.
The air smells stale, like dust and damp wood. It’s the scent that lingers after it rains.
My face is enveloped at once in a spider’s web. I step back, swatting and gasping as I work to wrangle the silk-like threads from my skin. When I’m free, I look back at Taylor, who is staring at her phone rather than looking my way.
Not that I’m surprised to see it.
Not that I can blame her really.
We put our bags down in the space between the kitchen and living room as I take in the sight of the cabin. My first impression of the outside of Foxglove after all this time still seems to be true inside. Despite being empty for the better part of the last thirty years, it’s held up quite well. It needs to be tidied up, for certain, but the bones seem strong.
Bones.
I swallow, forcing away the thought.
My eyes travel over the stone fireplace, the inside stained black from years of use. The mantel carries the word someone carved into it years before I was born. A legacy I studied and traced with my fingers over and over as a child.
It must’ve taken forever.My once-tiny voice rings in my head, and without moving, I can feel the cold, rough stone beneath my pointer finger.
Some things are worth taking the time.My grandma’s warm yet vague response had come from behind me. Was she sitting in her chair, knitting a blanket? Or perhaps she’d come up from behind me, whispering the response in my ear. Maybe she’d answered from the kitchen where she was baking cookies or peeling potatoes.
Try as I might, I can’t remember. The memory disappears like smoke. My young mind was only focused on the stone. On the word.
WILDE.
Did the woman who carved it know that her future granddaughters and great-granddaughters would stand next toit one day? That they’d cook their s’mores and warm their house under the letters she carved? Take Christmas photos gathered around it.
It could’ve been a man, I suppose. A great-great-grandfather of some kind, but in my mind, it’s always been a woman.
