Single mother gambled her final $900 on a deserted house. The discovery inside transforms her life forever…

Because I was desperate, she finally admitted. Because I was about to lose everything and sometimes when you’re at the very bottom you have to take a crazy chance. She looked at him seriously.

I’m sorry if I made the wrong choice. You didn’t, Ethan said with surprising conviction. This place feels, I don’t know, important somehow.

Like we’re supposed to be here. That night, after Ethan was asleep, Maya sat outside the trailer on a folding chair, staring at the dark silhouette of the house. The nearly full moon cast enough light to see the outline of the building against the night sky.

As she watched, she could have sworn she saw a faint light move past one of the upstairs windows, as if someone carrying a candle had walked by. But that was impossible. There was no electricity, and no one else was there.

Maya rubbed her eyes. She was exhausted, and her mind was playing tricks on her. Yet as she stared at the window, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was looking back.

The following days established a routine. Maya would work her morning shift at the coffee shop, then spend the afternoon trying to clean the house enough to make it minimally habitable. Ethan would go to school, then join her afterward, wearing a dust mask to protect his lungs.

Sam dropped by most days after his own work was done, tackling the most dangerous structural issues. He refused payment, saying only, you can pay me back when you’re on your feet. Iris brought food and stories about Josephine Mercer, painting a picture of a brilliant, independent woman who had moved to the rural community in the early 1980s.

According to Iris, Josephine had been in her early 30s when she bought the farm, already an accomplished herbalist with formal training in botany. She was a city girl originally. Iris explained one evening as they sat outside the trailer, had some fancy education though she never talked much about her past, said she came here looking for peace and space to grow her gardens.

What did she look like? Maya asked trying to picture the woman who had lived in their house. Beautiful woman, tall with the most striking eyes, one blue, one brown. Her mother was from Jamaica, father was white.

She had this wonderful laugh that made you want to laugh too, even if you didn’t know what was funny. And she just disappeared? No warning? Iris’ face grew serious. None.

Though thinking back she seemed anxious those last few weeks. Less open, always looking over her shoulder. I asked if something was wrong but she just said she was working on an important project and needed to concentrate.

Did the police have any theories? They didn’t try very hard if you ask me. Young black woman living alone in a rural area? They assumed she’d just left, even with all her belongings still here. As the days passed Maya couldn’t stop thinking about Josephine.

Who was she? What had happened to her? And why did Maya feel such a strong connection to a woman she had never met? One evening, as she was cleaning what would eventually be Ethan’s bedroom, Maya noticed that one floorboard moved slightly when she stepped on it. Curious, she knelt down to examine it. The board was loose and when she pried it up with a screwdriver, she found a small space underneath.

Heart pounding, she shone her flashlight into the cavity. There was something there, a metal box about the size of a thick hardcover book. She carefully lifted it out.

The tin box was old, its surface tarnished but still solid. There was no lock, just a simple latch. Maya hesitated, feeling like she was intruding on someone’s private space.

But this was her house now, and whatever secrets it held belonged to her too. She opened the box. Inside, protected from the elements that had damaged so much of the house, were three items.

A leather-bound journal, a small stack of photographs, and an ornate brass key. Maya lifted out the journal first. The cover was soft with age and use.

The pages slightly yellowed at the edges. Opening to the first page, she read, Property of Josephine Eleanor Mercer, 1982. This was Josephine’s personal journal.

Maya’s hands trembled slightly as she carefully turned the pages. The handwriting was neat and precise, detailing Josephine’s thoughts and experiences as she established her new life on the farm. The early entries were full of hope and plans, sketches of garden layouts, lists of medicinal plants, notes on the local ecosystem.

Josephine wrote about renovating the house, making friends with neighbors, including a much younger Iris, and her joy in having space to grow her healing garden. As Maya read further, she discovered that Josephine hadn’t been just any herbalist. She had a PhD in botanical biochemistry from Cornell University, and worked in pharmaceutical research before leaving to pursue her own studies.

Corporate research is too constrained by profit motives, Josephine had written. Nature has provided remedies for so many ailments, if only we approach it with respect, rather than exploitation. Here I can combine traditional knowledge with modern science, free from shareholders and patents…