Once, there was a girl who lived in a house at the edge of the forest.

Well, it was really an old dead-end street with some trees, but it looked forest-y and in the summer the dusk sparkled with fireflies. And she wasn’t a girl anymore; she’d given up that title earlier than she should have, many years before. But she loved that house because it glowed with childlike wonder and it was her sanctuary from the storm.

The world should have hardened her heart, but most of the time she still believed in magic. Her front porch had a mat on it that said, “Love Grows Here,” which was true, but her house was also the birthplace of anxiety, a ten-year-old’s tantrums (and a 37-year-old’s tantrums), giggles about a dog who eats cat poop, imaginary adventures filled with dragons and sword fights, and memories from a life very messily lived.