A Place to Die: A Short Story

By E.D. Martin

When Libby spends a summer helping out at her mom’s bed and breakfast-turned-hospice, she doesn’t expect to spend her time babysitting someone like Mr. Calloway – a young, vibrant financial planner with a mischievous streak. But Mr. Calloway is sicker than he seems, something neither he nor his family want to acknowledge.

Can Libby help him accept his fate without losing her heart?

• Language: English
• Publisher: E.D. Martin
• Release date: Jul 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463227008

E.D. Martin

E.D. Martin is a writer with a knack for finding new jobs in new places. Born and raised in Illinois, her past incarnations have included bookstore barista in Indiana, college student in southern France, statistician in North Carolina, economic development analyst in North Dakota, and high school teacher in Iowa. She draws on her experiences to tell the stories of those around her, with a generous heaping of “what if” thrown in.She currently lives in Illinois where she job hops while working on her novels.

Book preview

A PLACE TO DIE

A Short Story

by

E.D. Martin

Copyright

A Place to Die

Copyright © 2016 E.D. Martin

Cover Art by Indigo Forest Designs

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations used in reviews.

Other Books by E.D. Martin

The Heartsbane Saga:

Book .5: The Maiden in the Tower: A Short Story

Book 1: The Captive and the Cursed

Book 1.5: The Brave Little Thrall: A Short Story

Book 2: Sleeping Shaman

Novels:

Yours to Keep or Throw Aside

(previously released as The Lone Wolf)

Short Stories:

Not My Thing

Us, Together: A Short Story Collection

The Futility of Loving a Soldier: A Short Story Collection

Going in Circles Vol 1: 10 Very Short Stories

www.EDMartinWriter.com

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A Place to Die

You have to be tough to be a farmer in Wisconsin. You have the weather on one hand—floods, droughts, and storms can keep you from planting or wipe out your entire crop—and unpredictable markets on the other. After Dad died of cancer, Mom reevaluated the whole process. She was a nurse who’d always let Dad handle the farm, and she didn’t want to take it up this late in the game. But she couldn’t bear to sell the place; it had been her home for thirty years, filled with memories of family and Dad’s last days. So she rebranded it as The Lake Estate.

The farm—excuse me, the estate—butted up against Lake Michigan. Old cow paths wound around small copses and through an apple orchard, leading to a trail down to a pebble beach at the lake itself. I guess if someone was from a big city and not used to it, they could consider it pretty nice.

Mom was certainly betting on it. She put in a bunch of benches, flowery bushes, and gazebos strategically placed for the best views of the lake, then used Dad’s insurance money to renovate our 150-year-old farmhouse into a bed-and-breakfast. Each of the seven bedrooms had its own bathroom and fireplace. When a waiting list developed for those rooms, she added a dozen one-room cottages next to the old red barn.

She hired a local woman, Mrs. Nielson, to run the kitchen and provide meals to the guests. She brought in old retired farmers to run hayrack rides at dusk. And she considered putting in a playground for kids, but then a funny thing happened—our clientele shifted.

When we first opened, most of our guests were middle-aged couples coming up from Milwaukee. Maybe they couldn’t afford a weekend in Door County, or couldn’t stand to be that far from their kids. Either way, they slowly flooded the farm for the first couple years, only to be replaced with men and women with oxygen tanks, slow steps, and shallow breaths. Mom adapted to this too,