“There were small things that make sense in retrospect. His insistence on updating our wills three years ago. The way he’d sometimes look at us at dinner, almost memorizing our faces. His sudden interest in taking photos of ordinary moments.”
“I thought he was just going through a midlife appreciation phase,” Jenna said, smiling sadly.
“In a way, he was—just not for the reasons we assumed.”
I sipped my tea, remembering. “The biggest change was how he stopped putting things off. Your father was always a someday person about personal matters. Someday we’d take that trip to Europe. Someday he’d learn to sail. Someday we’d renovate the kitchen.”
“Then suddenly he started doing things rather than talking about them,” Jenna nodded. “Like buying this place.”
“Creating something lasting. Exactly. I attributed it to him finally feeling financially secure enough to indulge some dreams.”
I shook my head, still coming to terms with the magnitude of what he’d concealed. “I never imagined he was racing against time—creating a legacy because he knew he wouldn’t be here to see it mature.”
The Western Plains Energy representatives had been shocked when I outlined my conditions for their access to the oil beneath our property. Rather than selling the mineral rights outright for a lump sum as most landowners did, I insisted on a structured arrangement that prioritized environmental protection, employed sustainable extraction methods, and established a substantial trust for restoration after the oil was depleted.
“Mrs. Mitchell,” their lead negotiator had said, “these terms are highly unusual in the industry.”
“Then perhaps the industry needs more unusual terms,” I had replied, channeling Joshua’s quiet confidence. “The oil has been there for millions of years. It can stay there until we agree on responsible methods to retrieve it.”
To my surprise, Thomas Reeves—the CEO—had been intrigued rather than deterred by my approach.
“Your husband mentioned you were an environmental science major before switching to literature,” he’d noted. “He said you’d insist on doing this right—not just profitably.”
Another piece of Joshua’s planning revealed. He’d clearly been in communication with select industry leaders, laying groundwork for negotiations he knew would follow his death.
One month after claiming my inheritance, I stood in the art studio Joshua had created, sunlight streaming through the north-facing windows, illuminating a blank canvas on the easel.
After decades away from painting, I had finally picked up a brush again—hesitantly at first, then with growing confidence.
Today’s subject waited patiently in the paddock visible through the studio windows: Midnight, the magnificent Friesian stallion Joshua had purchased because he reminded him of a painting I’d admired twenty years earlier.
Ellis had been teaching me to ride again, my middle-aged body protesting, then adapting to the forgotten rhythms of horsemanship.
“Mom.”
Jenna appeared in the doorway, laptop in hand. “Today’s video is different. I think you should see it alone.”
I set down my paintbrush, curious. We had fallen into the routine of watching Joshua’s daily messages together over breakfast, finding comfort in the shared experience.
“Different how?”
“It’s marked specifically for month two, day fifteen. He titled it, ‘When Catherine starts painting again.’” She handed me the computer with a gentle smile. “He knew you would eventually.”
Alone in the studio, surrounded by the tools of a passion I was rediscovering, I opened the laptop and pressed play.
Joshua appeared, seated in this very room before any of the art supplies had been installed—the space bare except for the magnificent windows.
“Hello, my love,” he began, his smile warm and intimate. “If you’re watching this, you found your way back to your art—back to the passion you set aside for our family all those years ago.”
I touched the screen gently, tears welling in my eyes.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about legacy,” he continued. “What we leave behind—what marks we make on the world. Most people think of legacy in terms of children or wealth or accomplishment. But there’s another kind of legacy: the enabling of possibility in those we love.”
He gestured to the empty room around him.
“This space isn’t finished yet, but in my mind I can see it completed—filled with light and color and your creations. I imagine you standing before an easel, brush in hand, finally giving form to the visions you’ve carried inside you all these years.”
I glanced at the half-finished portrait of Midnight on my easel, struck by how closely it aligned with Joshua’s imagination.
“I’ve structured everything to give you freedom, Cat,” he continued. “Financial security through the oil rights, protection from my brothers’ interference, a beautiful space to create. But what you do with that freedom—that’s your legacy to build, not mine to dictate.”
He leaned closer to the camera, his expression intense.
“The farm, the horses, the art studio—they’re not the inheritance. They’re just the tools. The real inheritance is possibility—the chance to become more fully yourself without constraint.”
I paused the video, overwhelmed by the depth of his understanding. Joshua had known me better than I knew myself, had seen the dormant artist still alive within the practical teacher and devoted mother I’d become.
When I resumed the video, his expression had softened again.
“I have one request, though it’s yours to accept or decline. In the storage closet behind this room is a large canvas I commissioned before my diagnosis. It’s blank—waiting. When you’re ready, truly ready, I hope you’ll create something for it—something that captures not just what you see, but what you feel about this place that brought me back to my beginnings and will carry you into your future.”
The video ended with his familiar signoff.
“Until tomorrow, my love.”
I sat motionless for several minutes, processing his words.
Then, moved by impulse, I went to the storage closet and found exactly what he’d described: an enormous blank canvas custom-built for the prominent wall in the great room. It was the perfect size to create a statement piece—a focal point for the heart of the home Joshua had created.
Over the following weeks, as autumn painted the landscape in brilliant hues, I sketched countless drafts trying to capture the essence of Maple Creek Farm and what it represented. None satisfied me until one morning, watching Jenna riding Midnight across the eastern meadow, something clicked.
The painting took shape gradually—not a traditional landscape, but a blending of real and metaphorical elements.
The farm as it existed now in the background, rendered with photographic precision. In the foreground, a series of translucent layers showing what had come before: the abandoned property Joshua had purchased, the family farm of his childhood, and beneath it all, the ancient land that had witnessed generations come and go.
Threading through these temporal layers were two riders on horseback—a man and a woman—their features indistinct enough to represent both specific and universal journeys. Behind them, barely visible unless you knew to look, a third figure: a young woman forging her own path forward.
When the painting was finally complete, Ellis helped me hang it in its designated place in the great room.
Jenna stood back, studying it with tears in her eyes. “It’s him, isn’t it? And you and me.”
She traced the paths of the riders with her finger from a distance. “The past, present, and future of this place.”
“Legacy,” I said simply. “Not what’s left behind—but what continues forward.”
That evening, as I watched the sunset from the porch of what was now truly my home, I felt Joshua’s presence not as a ghost or memory, but as a continuing partnership.
He had given me not just material security, but a framework for reinvention. The freedom to discover who Katherine Mitchell might become when unconstrained by circumstance.
The oil would provide financial stability for generations. The farm would evolve according to our stewardship. And I would continue bringing beauty into the world through newly rediscovered talents, creating my own legacy alongside the one Joshua had so carefully prepared.
Tomorrow’s video waited on the laptop inside—another day of guidance and connection across the boundary that separated us.
But increasingly, I found myself looking forward rather than back—grateful for his foresight, but eager to write the next chapters of this unexpected story myself.
The forbidden farm had become hallowed ground—not a place of secrets and pain as Joshua had once known it, but a sanctuary of possibility, his final and greatest gift to me.
Winter descended on Maple Creek Farm with dramatic beauty: pristine snowfall blanketing the rolling pastures, ice crystals forming delicate patterns on the windows, smoke curling from the stone chimney into the crisp Alberta sky.
I had decided to stay through the season rather than return to Minnesota, drawn to experience the full cycle of seasons on this land that had become my unexpected home.
Jenna had reluctantly returned to her life in Minneapolis, her marketing firm unwilling to extend her leave of absence indefinitely. Our daily video ritual continued via FaceTime—the three of us still connected: Jenna in her urban apartment, me in the farmhouse living room, and Joshua’s recorded presence binding us across time and space.
“The western hills are particularly beautiful after fresh snow,” Joshua remarked in today’s video, filmed exactly one year ago in the same room. “If Ellis has kept up the maintenance on the snowmobile in the equipment barn, take it out to the ridge overlooking the valley. The view at sunrise is worth the early wakeup call.”
I smiled at his continuing ability to anticipate my experiences. Just yesterday, Ellis had mentioned the snowmobile and offered to show me the winter trails Joshua had mapped out across the property.
Six months had passed since I’d confronted the Mitchell brothers. True to our agreement, they had maintained their distance, though my attorney occasionally forwarded communications from their legal team—technical questions about property boundaries as Western Plains Energy began preliminary work on the eastern edge of the farm.
The oil extraction project was proceeding with deliberate care, the company honoring our unusual arrangement that prioritized environmental protection over rapid profit. Thomas Reeves had become an unexpected ally, his initial business interest evolving into genuine respect for the sustainable approach Joshua had envisioned and I had insisted upon.
My phone rang, pulling me from these thoughts. Jenna’s name flashed on the screen.
