A well-worn path tracks through the dirt. It runs from the beat-up rust-bucket of a truck in the driveway around the side of the house, past the garden, and into the shed where a partially butchered venison hangs from the ceiling. The skin is stretched on stakes at the side of the shed. A smoker fills the air with an aroma of hickory and barbeque while an Irish setter crunches contentedly on a bone near the back of the house. Justin Merrill smiles as he draws in a breath from his hand-rolled cigarette, surveying his domain from the back porch, exhaling, taking a break from his chore.
The house isn't much to look at. Not built to be a work of art, but to provide shelter. It's sturdy and functional, and he built it with his own hands along with most everything else here. Inside, there's no television, no microwave, no telephone. His singular indulgence is his shelves of books. Books of every genre, paperback and hardback, come home with him by the box load every time he goes into town. They and his well-stocked root cellar sustain him through the winter months.
The only other item of interest, the only thing to draw a visitor's attention, if he ever had a visitor, is the portrait of Missy that hangs over the fireplace. An oil portrait he'd painted of her, in her new business suit, after she'd landed that job she'd worked so hard to net. It was the only thing he'd kept. His only reminder of his past life. He's never been an idealist, but when the corporate world swallowed up the woman he loved and spit her back out as such a deplorable contorted version of herself, leaving him for bigger and better things, he left the corporate world.
