The old farm would need some work once spring arrived. Standing on the porch, she looked at the familiar landscape in front of her. To the left, the pond stood frozen with skeletons of trees leaning over its banks. There was a small wooden dock that had went unused during the years. She thought in the summer she might take it out of the shed, dust it off, and perhaps take visitors on morning rides. They might go fishing, or have a picnic on the water. They could do these things now.
Although it was winter, the large piece of land that stretched out in front of her, and beyond the land the line of trees that marked the beginnings of the Grayson farm, looked surprisingly green, as if there were some kind of anticipation growing beneath the earth, some sense that spring would come and things that should grow out of the land—bright turnips and radishes, deep earthy potatoes, long stalks of yellow corn—would begin to take shape, slowly, until the harvest when they would break through the ground and rise into the air.
In a month she would hire help and clear some land. She still felt the pull of her old life, and even through the potential she saw in front of her, it was still part of something she wanted to leave. She breathed deeply and felt the cold air fill her body. It was fresh and wonderful, mysterious. The air was still enough to hear her own breaths, see the warmth of her body appear in a white fog, then disappear. She leaned on the banister, shrugging her shoulders. In the distance a shotgun echoed through the air, then the barking of the Grayson’s hound, deep and resonant. It rang in her heart and reverberated there, swirling life that filled the dead spaces inside of her.