My Parents Sold Their Paid Off House To Rescue My Sister Until I Discovered The Truth

There is a specific kind of silence you can only buy with ten years of eighty-hour work weeks. It is not simply the absence of noise. It is the absence of obligation.

It is the sound of rain against triple-pane glass that you paid for yourself, in a house that you designed, on three acres of wooded land where only your name appears on the deed. My name is Rowan. I am thirty-six years old.

I work as a remote architectural consultant for high-end commercial projects, which means I can live anywhere I choose, and I chose this: a modern two-story A-frame on the wooded shore of Lake Superior, rugged and isolated and cold for six months of the year, which is exactly how I like it. I spent four years building this place. I laid the deck plank by plank.