The laminated chart was the kind of thing people created when they wanted a bad decision to look organized.

It had colored blocks, neat borders, typed names, and a small mountain silhouette across the top.

Mark had even inserted a legend in the lower corner: blue for family, green for friends, gold for special events.

My own name was gray.

Evelyn Mercer — Oct.

12–18.

I stared at it until the letters blurred.

Mark sat across from me at the dining table of my cabin, one ankle resting over his knee.

He wore an expensive-looking quarter-zip and the satisfied expression of a man presenting a solution no sensible person could object to.

“We saved you the second week of October,” he said.

Behind him, late-May sunlight fell through the windows Thomas and I had spent six winters saving to replace.

For a moment, all I could hear was the refrigerator humming in the kitchen.

“Saved me?” I asked.

Mark’s smile tightened slightly.

“You know what I mean.

Reserved it for you.”

My daughter Claire stood at the sink rinsing strawberries in a white ceramic bowl.

Her back was turned to us.

I waited for her to laugh.

Or correct him.

Or say, Mark, that sounds ridiculous.

This is Mom’s cabin.

She did none of those things.

Water continued running over the strawberries.

I looked back at the chart.

June was mostly blue.

Mark’s parents had ten days.

His sister’s family had another week.

July was a mixture of green and gold, including names I had never seen in my life.

August was nearly full.

Labor Day weekend was labeled HENDERSON FAMILY REUNION in bold letters.

October belonged to me.

The cabin had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a narrow kitchen, and a porch that overlooked a valley in western North Carolina where morning fog settled between ridges like water in a bowl.

When Thomas and I bought it twenty-eight years earlier, calling it a cabin had been generous.

The chimney leaned away from the roof.

Two windows would not close.

Mice lived behind the stove.

Rain came through the upstairs ceiling above the smaller bedroom whenever storms blew in from the west.

The realtor called it rustic.

Thomas walked onto the sagging porch, stared across the mountains, and said, “Imagine growing old here.”

I told him we would be lucky to avoid bankruptcy here.

He laughed.

That laugh was one of the things I missed most after he died.

Thomas could laugh at disaster without pretending disaster was not real.

We bought the place because it was barely within reach, and then spent almost three decades making it worthy of the view.

We patched the roof ourselves the first autumn.

Thomas climbed while I stood below reading instructions from a library book because neither of us knew what we were doing.

We replaced rotten joists beneath the kitchen floor one board at a time.

We hauled river stone in the trunk of our old Buick to rebuild the firepit.

One August storm dropped a pine tree across the porch.

Contractors quoted sums we could not afford, so we spent twelve weekends rebuilding it ourselves.

Thomas measured.

I cut.

He cursed.

I recut.

At night, we soaked sore hands in warm water and argued over whether the new railing should be cedar