It was perfect timing. I’d just ended what was probably my eight hundredth bad relationship, if you could even call it that, and enough was enough. As I cruised along the stretch of highway that led to Red Springs, Nebraska, I took in the fresh air, letting it out on a deep breath. I was already feeling more relaxed, even though I didn’t know exactly what I was getting myself into. The warm air of June filled my lungs, and I checked my navigation system to find I still had about an hour left in my drive.

Inheriting a house and a bunch of property seemed like a win for anyone in my situation. A twenty-eight year old renter, living in the city, but the house had some bad juju for me. My grandmother, my father’s mother, had passed away, and left me this house. I didn’t know her. In fact, I’d never met her, or even given much thought to her in many years. Because of the bad blood between her and my father, I’d never tried, nor aspired, to establish a relationship with her. My mother and father were high school sweethearts. They were in young and in love, the whole nine yards, and found themselves pregnant, with me. While only eighteen and seventeen, they decided to keep me.

My dad dropped out of high school to get a job, support my mother, and start a family with her. How he told the story was, that it was never even a question. They were going to be a family, and had planned to get married and have children anyway; it was obviously God’s plan that they start earlier than they intended. My father’s mother was old-fashioned, and thought that I should be given up for adoption, and that my mother should be sent away to have me in secret. I surmise that she was embarrassed, although my father would never say that to me. He simply said that she was set in her ways, so he and my mother moved to the city, where I was born raised.

The tragic part of the story though, is that my mother died giving birth to me. Even at twenty-eight, I have days where I feel responsible for that. Obviously I didn’t do it, and my rational brain knows that, but never getting to know my mother has always haunted me. My father raised me himself, taking a job in a factory, since he had not finished his formal education. He once told me that he’d hoped to be a teacher when he was younger, but never went back to school. I didn’t realize the gravity of what he gave up for me, until he passed away two years prior to me inheriting this damned house.

My knuckles gripped the steering wheel as my chest tightened at the memory of him telling me all of this, when he knew he was dying. He’d gotten cancer, from working in that same factory he went to, day in and day out, for almost thirty years. He got cancer doing a job I’m certain he didn’t love, just so he could take care of me. I’d chosen a career I loved, which paid absolute shit, because he wanted me to have what he didn’t. I was a teacher. An art teacher, whose program was constantly on the chopping block. Thankfully, I’d been offered my contract to come back in the fall, so I’d have a job at the end of the summer. That didn’t change the guilt that clung to me like a thick fog.

I was the last surviving relative in line to inherit the house, as I understood it from the lawyer I spoke with. It had taken them awhile to find me, and the house had been sitting vacant for quite some time. My father was named in the Will, but since he’d passed, it had been left to me. To my surprise, I had been named in the Will as the beneficiary, should my father not be alive. I huffed with indignation as I spied a sign that indicated my destination was looming.

The pictures I was sent showed a large farmhouse, on five acres, that had been left to Mother Nature over the years, and clearly needed some work. I had the entire summer to fix it up, which is what I intended to do, before putting it on the market, and closing up that chapter; for me and my dad both. He rarely mentioned my grandmother, or growing up in that house. As much as I tried to fight it, I was curious to see where he’d spent his childhood days. I suppose, technically, he grew up in the city, since he was practically a kid when he had me, but I couldn’t evade the desire to see where he’d come from.

It had only been a year since my father had passed away, and the emotions were still fresh. It felt as though it were still a gaping wound in my heart, and I was going to use this summer project to heal my wounds, and to get closure for my dad. I had been driving for a couple of hours, almost to my destination in Red Springs, when I decided to make a pit stop before I got to the house. Who even knew if the plumbing was working, after all, and I wasn’t about that outdoor life.