Emily and I had been talking about leaving the city for years, but for a long time it was just talk.

The idea of it, the fantasy, was always easier than the reality.

Work, schedules, expenses. There was always something keeping us in place. But then Emily's

job went fully remote and my company downsized, leaving me with a severance package

and more free time than I knew what to do with. The noise of the city, the weight of routine,

it all started feeling suffocating. Emily was the one of the city, the weight of routine. It all started feeling suffocating.

Emily was the one who found the listing.

Look at this, she had said one evening, laptop balanced on her knees.

It's perfect.

I leaned over a shoulder, expecting some overpriced cabin in the middle of nowhere.

Instead, I saw an old two-story house with deep green shutters and a wraparound porch, nestled right at the edge of a vast, untouched forest, the kind of place you'd see in an old postcard.

I laughed. That looks like the beginning of a horror movie, she grinned, or the beginning of

something good. Emily had always loved the woods. When she was a kid, she used to disappear into them for hours,

coming back with twigs in her hair and stories about deer that let her get too close,

birds that seemed to follow her. She always said there was something different about being

deep in nature, something bigger than her, but strangely familiar. I had never really understood it, but I loved how much she loved it.

And maybe I needed a change too.

So, we packed up, left behind the noise, and moved to the quietest place we could find.

Our new home was old, but it had character.

Solid wooden beams, a deep front porch, ivy climbing up the stone walls.

It sat at the very edge of town where the paved roads turned to dirt where the streetlights thinned and

finally disappeared. It was the kind of place where time felt slower, with the days

...