This was our haven. We made it up a refuge for our love, a safeguard for what we held dear to each other. We’d drive out every weekend when we knew we could get away, and the pair of us would escape into a time and place where tragedy never existed. We would cook meals together in the tiny, beat up kitchen, have picnics by candle-light on the rickety old wood floor of the living room, and spend all day in bed with thin white sheets wrapped loosely around our bare bodies, intertwined in the most delicate of places. He’d whisper sweet phrases to me in various languages, and I’d lightly trace the tiny black hairs down his chest, drinking in every word.

We knew our fantasy couldn’t last forever, but we took advantage of every second we had left in our Wonderland.

And then it was back to reality.