"I don't care, I love you anyhow. It is too late to turn you out of my heart. Part of you lives here"
- Anne Sexton

Hello there. I hope it wasn't too much trouble finding this spot. Pleased to meet you. Yeah, this part of the woods is thicker, more isolated. I prefer it this way.
Well then, come along. You can keep your car here. Nobody ever comes this way.
There is a road, a path more like. That's what I use if I have to go into town. Or when my family visits.
I do have a car. It's a truck. Let's get going. It's not much of a walk. Just watch what you step on.

Welcome to my humble abode. Make yourself comfortable. What can I get you? Water, tea, coffee?
All right. I'll be just a minute. Oh, I forgot to show you the dogs. If I don't tell them you're friendly, they might attack you. Just come with me to the door for a second, let them see you walk.
Allie, Bernard, Dante!
Whoa, easy on the licks, children. Look who that is. We have a guest visiting us. Allie, down, girl. That's a friend, okay? No bothering them. You're lucky I have company or it was bath day for you, Bernard.
All right, off you go.
There. We can go back in now. Yeah, they are rescue dogs, all of them. Dante is half wolf and Allie is half coyote, actually. I don't have to worry about feeding them. They hunt. Bernard is more domesticated than the other two. He reminds me of my old dog Bubbly sometimes. Have a seat. I'll bring us some water.

Here you go. From the fresh stream, and purified. It might taste a bit earthy if you're not used to it.
How's Hank, by the way? When he called me and said a journalist friend of his wanted an interview with me, I was surprised. Hank isn't one to ask for favours. You must be good friends, not that it's any of my business.
Ah. College buddies. Makes sense. So then. Ask away. What would you like to know?

Yes. I said goodbye to human civilization in 2058. I have been living here ever since. It took me two weeks to make this cottage. Yes, I made it with some help from my sons and my daughter. I took two years of masonry and construction lessons from a friend, so I could make this myself. I don't like wooden cabins, and I love the English stone cottages from my childhood. So that's how I wanted my last ever home to be like.
Do you want to see my organic garden? Come.

No, no. Lentils require the least amount of water. The potatoes are more of a treat cause I love them. My grandmother used to say I got that from my grandfather. He was Russian by birth.
I was never a vegetarian, actually. I only eat meat when my family brings me some, or when I visit them. Hunting is cruel, no matter how you dress it. I understand hunting is necessary for people who don't have access to other food and who need that meat for survival. But for any other reasons, it's just cruel.
The compost stinks to high heaven. You might want to cover your nose. No, it's more of a necessity. The toilet in the cottage is completely green. Recycled water, the waste goes into the compost, along with the leaves I rake and any other degradable waste that won't ruin the compost. That's enough about the compost, I suppose. I don't think your readers would be much enthralled by reading about an old woman's composting. I'll show you the solar panels, come on.

That's the green tour. You have already seen the drawing room. That's the hearth. Inside, this way, there's a kitchen, the toilet, and two bedrooms. One for me, one for when my grandchildren visit. If you like books, the bedrooms are walls to walls of books. They are quite old, some notebooks too. I use a Kindle now. As much as I hate it, it's much greener. Little sacrifices for the better good, right?
Let me get you something to eat. No, no. It's no trouble. It would be unnatural to be sent away from an old woman's house without eating something. You like fruit jam?Sit tight. I'll be right back.

Here. Help yourself. Don't be shy.
My daughter helped most with making the cottage environmentally sustainable. She's an engineer, specialises in green solutions. It's funny cause my sons are not that much into trees and environmental protection like I am. I birthed them and Veronica was adopted. She's more like me and her father than those three boys.
The older two are twins. Spencer's a Chemistry professor, and George is an FBI profiler. Arthur is an artist. All my children turned out to be good people as far as I know. That's the most you can expect from them as parents, knowing you did your part.
My daughter did help with the house but the reforestation I wanted to do on my own. She has her own life, you know. And besides, it was my dream, not hers. It's only right that I should have been the one to work on it.
Took twenty years. It was patient and hard work, lots of planning.
There was quite a bit of attention my work had drawn, some five years ago. Because of some article an experienced journalist wrote, "The grandma from Virginia who resurrected an entire forest".
It was amusing. I have a PhD in Botany, and I was a college professor for almost 40 years, but that article introduced me as "Mrs. Reid, a widow in Virginia". Some things never change.
Yes. There were a few organisations that did try to contact me about bringing back other forests. But I have fallen in love with this one. I wrote a book about reforestation and sent it to them as a present. This has been my home for years, and as much as I want to make the world a greener place, I can't leave behind this one. It was my childhood dream - to live as one with nature. My retirement plan had always been this, to go and live in a forest by myself. You could say I'm living my dream.
My childhood? It was spent mostly in England and here, USA. I was the youngest among three sisters and two brothers. My parents were the nicest people you would ever meet. My grandparents were inspiring. My siblings always had my back. It was quite the life, growing up loved by so many people.

I see you keep looking from me to the handsome man adorning an entire wall. You can ask.
I made all those photo frames too. Not that one in the centre, my grandson, Percy, made it for me when he was in second grade. Let's get a closer look, come.

This is the love of my life, the most incredible man I have ever known, my late husband - Dr. Spencer Reid. He was an FBI profiler and a polymath. That's a picture from before I knew him, receiving his first PhD. That's also an older one, from his training days at Quantico. Yes, he was quite young when he started.
This one is from one of our first dates. He still looks 20 in this one, doesn't he? Oh, thank you. I wouldn't say I was that much of a looker. But he and I sure looked great together.
This one is from Veronica's third birthday. That's all our friends and family. This gentleman right here, this is Hank's father, Derek Morgan. My husband was Hank's godfather. He and Derek were like brothers, worked in the FBI together for over a decade. That's my brother George. He was murdered by a serial killer in Texas, years ago. We named our son after my dear brother.
This one is from the hospital, when the twins were born. My husband insisted on having his picture taken with both of them in his arms and our daughter looking over from his shoulder. He loved her so much.
This one... that's a picture I took after he retired as an active duty agent in the FBI. He still worked with them in a consulting capacity but that was that. He had to retire because of early onset dementia. Yes.
He wasn't even 50 when we were told. I still remember how devastated he was. We felt like time had turned against us, wanting to punish my darling love through no fault of his own.
I was pregnant for a second time when he retired. The doctors said there was a high probability of his dementia progressing into Alzheimer's when he got older. So my husband did what he did best. He researched. He spent the rest of his life, trying to find a solution for slowing down dementia and Alzheimer's. Thankfully, his dementia never progressed into Alzheimer's.
This picture is from our wedding day. As you can see, I was heavily pregnant. I had turned down his proposal once before, but when those doctors told us that my Dr. Reid had dementia, I couldn't just do nothing. I begged him to marry me. He finally relented and I wanted to get done with the wedding as soon as possible.
I was seven months pregnant when we got married. What you can't see in this picture is the bruises on my face. Those were covered up by tons of makeup and Photoshop. No, not an accident.
I was kidnapped on the morning of my wedding. I laugh now, but it was no laughing matter for us that day. Some guy Dr. Reid had sent to prison, his lover wanted to ruin our wedding day by torturing my groom and killing me. But the day was saved, thanks to my husband and his team, the Behavioural Analysis Unit of the FBI.
The attacker punched and hit me a bunch of times, that's all. There was nothing I could do. I'm a civilian. I was never trained to fight and outsmart such people. I just kept breathing until I was rescued.
And this picture is from Arthur's sixth birthday. I remember my brother Max took the picture, because we all - me, my husband, my kids - we were all laughing in it and we looked like the happiest family on the planet. Honestly, I think we might have been that.

There were difficult times, of course. Children grow older, they become moodier. There were days when I felt like I was being pulled into six different directions, stretched to the point of it being physically painful. But I forged on. That's what you do when you love someone. Our children were wonderful though, when it came to their father's condition.
There was this one time, one of his bad days. Dr. Reid woke up in the middle of the night and he pointed a gun at me. He didn't remember who I was. He thought I was the one who was stalking his old girlfriend. He said he would kill me to get to her if he had to.
Hurt? No. Maybe a little. But I knew that wasn't his fault. He just didn't remember.
I was trying to talk him down. I showed him the picture on our night stand from our honeymoon, but he wouldn't believe me. To my horror, the children had heard the commotion and they came bursting into our room. Arthur was only five. He hugged his Dad's legs before we could even stop him. Veronica, being the oldest, she tried to remind him who we were. The twins, they talked him down. "Dad, it's us. You have dementia. It's okay. You just forgot who we are. It's totally cool. Just don't shoot Mom. Put the gun down".
I had never been prouder of the kids more than I was that night.

Towards the end, my husband couldn't remember much. Thankfully, it never progressed into Alzheimer's. He had complete control over his body right until the end, just the way he had wanted. For the last seven days of his life, he couldn't recognise most of us. But the day he passed away, he took my hand while I was reading a book by his bed, and he thanked me for being his wife. He said, "I love you, Monica Knight". We talked for a while, only as much as his body allowed him to. He passed away that night in his sleep.

I have lived a very full life. I have lived to see all my dreams being fulfilled. But after he passed away, it made no sense for me to live in a world that would only keep reminding me he was no more.
I'm all right. I'm okay. It's just... I still miss him.
Here, keeping myself busy among the trees and books and solitude, it's all I can do to stop thinking of him. It's been twenty-two years since he passed away, but you can't get used to living without someone like him. He was the most amazing person you would ever meet. He was my friend, my lover, my partner, my husband.
Everything I hold dear today is somehow connected to him, or reminds me of him. My family provides scholarships and fellowships in his name. They get together on his birthday every year, talking about how much they miss him. I stay here with all his books and his memories, listening to the music he loved, watching old videos and pictures of him.
Oh, look at me. Blabbering about my personal life like an old fool. You had more questions about the forest? Let's hear them.

"...I love you, Monica"
Everyone "aww"d at the groom's wedding vows while the bride wiped her tears, smiling. She held the cuff of the groom's sleeve again, looking up into his eyes with the utmost adoration.
"I with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me innocent or naïve, who has the courage to treat me like a woman*. I choose you, Spencer Reid", she smiled, "Because there's no one else in the world I would rather belong to, heart and soul. Come what may - killers, criminals, spies and villains - no one will ever take me away from you, darling, I promise"
The groom's tearful smile was equally heart-warming. The judge officiating their wedding soon announced,
"I now declare you, Spencer Reid and Monica Knight, to be lawfully married. You may kiss the bride"
Amidst hooting and cheering from their friends, the groom embraced his bride. He pulled her as close as her pregnant body would allow, and kissed her before he could even stop smiling. Their foreheads touching, having kissed her for the second time that day, Spencer said,
"Congratulations. You just married a 43-year old former FBI agent, with dementia and Asperger's"
Monica grinned, tweaking his nose,
"Nope. I married a genius profiler and scholar, the father to my children, who also happens to be the kindest and sexiest man alive"
At his bashful smile, she made him look back at her again, saying,
"But you, my love, just married a former spy, who is almost an eco-terrorist, who has more secrets than you have abs, who is heavily preggers, and who is still going to climb on top of you in the honeymoon suite tonight"
Spencer smiled,
"A liar and a weirdo. Not the most classic love story"
"My weirdo"
"And my liar", he hugged her tighter.

"I will live for love and the rest will take care of itself"
- Marina Keegan

A/N: *The quote is by Anaïs Nin.
Thank you for your response to this story. I'm very grateful. Thank you so much.