Chapter 3: The Sanctuary in Galena
Three days later, Robert loaded three suitcases into the back of his pickup truck.
He drove Lauren ninety miles northwest, leaving behind the suffocating gossip of Naperville, heading into the rolling driftless hills of Galena, Illinois.
There, situated on a twenty-acre ridge of burr oaks and limestone bluffs, sat *The Whispering Ridge Homestead*—a hand-hewn cedar cabin and apple orchard built by Robert’s grandfather in 1952.
The property was quiet. The air smelled of woodsmoke, fallen oak leaves, and the crisp, clean chill of the Mississippi River valley.
Standing on the timber porch was Martha Vance, Robert’s seventy-two-year-old sister—a retired public school principal and botanist who had tended the orchard for thirty years. Martha was wearing a heavy wool sweater and leather work boots, her grey hair tied back in a practical braid.
When the truck came to a stop in the gravel driveway, Martha walked down the stone steps, opened the passenger door, and pulled Lauren into a long, fierce embrace.
""Come inside, child,"" Martha said softly, her voice carrying the slow, steady strength of the ancient hills. ""The kettle is on the cast-iron stove, and the trees don't care about anything that happened in town.""
Inside, the cabin was warm and unpretentious. Wide-plank pine floors glowed beneath braided wool rugs; a roaring fire in the fieldstone hearth cast dancing amber light across bookshelves filled with antique botany volumes and forestry manuals.
Lauren walked to the wide bay window overlooking the orchard, watching a flock of wild turkeys foraging among the dry grasses.
For the first time in ninety-six hours, her chest expanded without the crushing grip of panic.
May you like
""There is no timeline here, Lauren,"" Robert said, setting her bags by the loft stairs. ""You stay as long as you need. You breathe, you walk the ridges, and you let the ground hold you.""
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