I was on my way to church when I realized I’d forgotten my hearing aid and turned back. That’s when I heard my daughter-in-law arguing loudly with my son. “Tonight, this ends,” she said. I moved closer to listen—and what I heard next made me leave immediately, shaken.

The morning sun filtered through the lace curtains of my bedroom window, casting familiar, comforting patterns across the hardwood floor I’d walked for forty-two years. At sixty-seven, I’d learned to appreciate these small rituals: the way light moved through my farmhouse like a slow-moving tide, the sound of mockingbirds arguing in the ancient magnolia tree outside, and the reliable, grounding creak of the third step on the staircase.

My name is Marilyn Woolsey. I have spent most of my life in Willow Creek, Virginia, believing I understood the rhythms of family, faith, and the quiet dignity of growing old in the place you’d built with your own hands. I believed that love was a currency that never devalued. I was wrong.

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