Chris Mitchell

The End of Mary

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. In all the years my family had been coming here, we’d never known anyone to occupy the Old Worthy Place, not even for a summer. Ours and theirs were the only two cabins situated in this tiny North-Easterly part of New England, and that was one of the reasons we made a point to come out here whenever we needed a break from the city. On occasions when there had been more of us, we would walk in the woods or swim in the lake together (keeping close to the shoreline, after Nana warned us about wading in too deep), but since mother had died and Em had gone away to college, we found ourselves spending more and more time apart.