I had lived in my small town since the day I was born and I didn’t leave until the age of 18.

The cabin had been there since even before then.

Some of the older people in town say that it used to be beautiful. A well crafted wooden cabin with a gorgeous garden in its front lawn. In my earliest memories, the once beautiful garden is overgrown to the point that some of the grass is several feet tall and the cabin itself has given way to old age, a rustic feeling that might be nice if it weren’t for the mold.

I remember being four and asking my mom who lived there. I don’t remember what sparked the question but I remember her answer.

“No one knows.”

I never liked that answer. I also never liked that it was the answer I almost always received whenever I asked anybody. My moms coworkers, Andrew’s parents, everyone always gave me the same answer, or some variation of it.

“It’s hard to say.”

“Who knows?”

“I have not a clue.”

It frustrated me as a curious child. How could no one know the answer to such a simple question?

I got my first and only real answer from Mrs. Cameron, the old woman who ran the local bakery.

She told me that the cabin was once inhabited by two young women who went missing twenty years before. When I asked what happened to them, she gave me my least favorite answer.

“No one knows.”

That frustrated me but I wasn’t upset with Mrs. Cameron. I couldn’t be, because she also clarified why so many people had no idea. Apparently, the two women who had lived there barely left the cabin because people in town “didn’t approve of their lifestyle”.

When I asked what that meant Mrs. Cameron just smiled at me and said, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Two years later Mrs. Cameron died, leaving the bakery to her granddaughter, Alexandra Cameron, who had moved in with her grandmother a few years before to help take care of her in her old age.

Three years after that and someone came back to live in the cabin.

I remember first hearing of someone’s return when my mother came home one day and told my father she had seen someone working on the front lawn as she drove by.

I wanted to see for myself so I rode my bike down that way, just to take a look. I didn’t see whoever had been living there, but for the first time in my whole life, the grass out front was cut short.

I heard more information from people at school, around town. Apparently the person who had returned was an older woman, maybe early to mid fifties. No one had seen her around town except for quick trips to the general store for food and when she made the trip, she barely said anything.

Of course, her return sparked many rumors. Rumors about her, who she was, where she came from, where she had been all this time.

I’m not too sure what most people thought the explanation was, but at my elementary school, the theory most believed was that she was a witch.

Kids my age liked to make up tall tales about her, saying that the cabin was her home before she had to leave after someone found out what she was and now she’s back to wrap up some sort of unfinished business.

This theory was largely supported by the presence of more than one cat seen lounging in the sun on her front lawn while she worked on the house.

The day I actually met her is a day I will always remember. I had been on a bike ride with Andrew in the evening when we passed the cabin and Andrew dared me to knock on her door.

I accepted the dare. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t scared, I was also curious.

I wanted to know where she had been and where the other woman was.

I left Andrew on the side of the road and walked right up to the front door of the cabin and knocked.

A few moments passed before the door opened. The woman standing in front of me looked to be middle aged, tall (the fact that I was nine at the time aside), with shoulder length ginger hair.

She regarded me for a moment. I wasn’t quite sure what to say now that I was there.

Luckily, I didn’t need to say anything before she asked, “would you like a cookie?”

I blinked at her and then answered affirmatively.

She disappeared into the house before shortly returning with a plate of cookies which she then offered to me.

I took one and took a bite. It was delicious. I reached for another and she let me take it.

I stared at her after, not sure what to do. I wanted to ask her all the questions I had but looking at her I just couldn’t.

Eventually she told me I should probably get going so I did. I walked back outside to Andrew and offered him the other cookie I had grabbed. He said he didn’t want it. I didn’t fight him about it. More for me.

I went back again a week later. This time I knew what to say when she opened the door.

“Do you have more cookies?”

She laughed and let me inside. It was a cozy place. There were a couple of older looking couches with a coffee table in the middle of the room and a brick fireplace that was not currently lit.

To my right was the kitchen and soon after I entered the house she returned from the kitchen with a plate of cookies.

She invited me to sit on her couch and then we spent about an hour getting to know each other. I found out her name was Cecilia and she had grown up in town. I introduced myself to her and told her a bit about my life.

I was probably there for an hour before she recommended I go home, lest I worry my parents.

I left that day with every intention of coming back and I did.

Every week, I would visit Cecilia and we would talk and eat cookies. I would tell her about school and she would tell me about things around town that had changed since she had been gone.

As the years went by, the house’s condition improved as Cecilia worked on removing the moldy parts of the wall and keeping the garden healthy and watered. Sometimes on sunny weekends, I would sit on her front lawn reading a book while she worked on the garden.

I was twelve when I first visited Cecilia at the same time as Alexandra. When I made eye contact with Alexandra from the doorway, she smiled at me. When I sat down on the couch across from her she simply said, “Hi Finn.”

So then it was the three of us. I told them about kids in my middle school, Cecilia told us about a stray cat she kept finding in her backyard, and Alexandra let us in on town gossip she had heard while running the bakery.

I was thirteen when I asked Cecilia if she knew about the two women who had supposedly lived here in the past. She got a faraway look in her eyes before she chuckled softly. She then sat me down and told me her story.

One of those two women had been her and the other had been a woman by the name of Mary. They had met as kids and had been best friends for their whole lives. Then, as they got older, they fell in love.

The cabin was Mary's. Cecilia told me about how Mary had bought it after saving up money from working since the age of fourteen and how she had immediately asked Cecilia to move in with her. Cecilia said yes and that was that. The two lived together. They were life partners and partners in life.

Although they didn't go around proclaiming their love for each other in the streets, many people were able to guess the nature of their relationship and most weren't very supportive. (At this, I thought about Mrs. Cameron's words. "People didn't approve of their lifestyle.") The two of them didn't have a lot of people in their lives but they had each other and that was enough.

When I asked where Mary was now she got that faraway look in her eyes again and she told me "I'll tell you when you're older."

I didn't bother asking her where she had disappeared to for twenty-five years.

I was fourteen when my parents died. My mom had gotten into a fatal car crash and my dad was only able to live a week without her before he followed. I don't remember a lot of the especially difficult parts of that experience. Loss and grief and feeling miserable. I don't remember much of it. What I do remember is going to Cecilia's house everyday and feeling a little less miserable because she would be there, willing to offer herself as a shoulder to cry on. I remember Alexandra arriving a few hours after I did with a plate of leftover cookies from the bakery. I remember managing to find happiness amidst all the sad.

My father had left everything for me. The house, his car, his money, everything. I felt strong enough at that point in my life to take care of myself. Everyone else in my life agreed. I stayed at the house and lived by myself from then on.

I was fifteen when I told Cecilia and Alexandra that I thought I might be falling for Andrew. They both smiled and offered to listen while I talked about him and my feelings for him and they gave any advice they could.

I was sixteen when I told Andrew I had fallen for him.

I was sixteen when I kissed Andrew for the first time.

We were both seventeen when we got caught. Andrew came to my house the next day and told me the worst news of my life.

His parents were sending him away and he was to never see me again.

We stood there and we cried. We sobbed and we clung to each other like never before. And then his parents dragged him out of my house, told me to never talk to their son again, and slammed the door shut.

I sat in my house for a while, stewing in my sadness, before I went to the cabin. Cecilia and Alexandra were there waiting for me and they stayed with me that whole night until I had ran out of tears to cry.

Later that night I was had my head in Alexandra's lap and Cecilia was making cookies and I finally asked the question that had been plaguing my mind for the past three years.

"What happened to Mary?"

Cecilia inhaled sharply before turning to look at me with sad eyes. She told me what happened, though I could tell it wasn't easy for her. Someone had killed Mary. Someone had taken out their anger and hatred for people like us and used it to kill Mary.

I waited a bit before I asked her where she had been for twenty-five years. Her eyes after I asked that question were unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

"Getting revenge."

I didn't ask what she meant by that. I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

I was eighteen when I left town to go to college.

I was eighteen when I sent my first letter to a cabin in my hometown.

I was eighteen when I knew that that cabin would always be home.