My Husband Told Me Never To Go To The House At Blue Heron Ridge Until Three Years Later

He had remembered.

The front door was unlocked. I had expected to need the key from Daniel’s office, but the door opened when I pressed the heavy iron handle, swinging inward on hinges that did not squeak, and the smell that came out to meet me stopped me on the threshold.

Orchids.

Not the faint, slightly generic sweetness of a florist’s shop, but something more complex and particular, the layered fragrance of multiple varieties occupying a shared space, each distinct if you knew how to separate them, together creating something that felt less like a smell and more like a climate.

I stepped inside.