PART 1: Corinne Fletcher had spent most of her fifty seven years believing her life would always be defined by sterile hospital corridors, late night emergencies, and the echo of her own footsteps in an apartment that never felt like home. She was a physician at a clinic in Silvergrove, Colorado. People in town respected her, but respect was not companionship. Admiration was not warmth. Corinne felt as if she existed behind glass. She could look into other people’s lives, yet she could never find a door that let her enter.
On a humid July afternoon, she was driving back from a medical conference. Her mind drifted between exhaustion and the soft thrum of the radio. The landscape rolled out in wide stretches of farmland and faded barns. Then she saw them. Two elderly figures at the side of the road, sitting on suitcases, thin and slumped as if life itself had deflated them. Corinne slowed. Her heart tugged with something she could not immediately identify. Pity perhaps. Or maybe recognition. She pulled over.
The woman raised her head first. She looked to be around eighty. Her silver hair was braided neatly. The man beside her was older. His hands trembled as he tried to stand.
Corinne stepped out and called, “Are you alright? Do you need help?”
The woman nodded slowly. “Please. My name is Augusta Keller. This is my husband, Raymond. We have nowhere else to go. Our son and daughter told us to leave their home this morning. They said we were a burden.”
Hearing those words felt like being struck. Corinne took a deep breath. “You must be exhausted. Get in the car. I will take you somewhere safe.”
Raymond tried to protest. “We do not want to inconvenience you.”
“You are not inconveniencing me,” Corinne replied. “You need help. Let me help.”
They rode in silence for a while until Augusta spoke again. “We raised our children to be kind. I do not know what went wrong.”
Corinne reached for her hand. “Sometimes people lose their way. It does not mean you deserved what happened.”
She brought them to her home. It was small but clean and filled with the scent of pine from candles she burned to mask the sterility she so despised. She made them tea. She prepared sandwiches. She offered them her guest room.
By the time night arrived, the Kellers…
