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Stopping was not an option. With borrowed money I put down the deposit on a year round rental—the bottom part of a house on the water across the creek from a farm where War Admiral retired, in site of night lights of the harness racing track out side of Berlin, MD. Built on a former wetland that had been filled in when no one was looking in the 1950s, the house was owned by a Baltimore slumlord and his Peruvian wife. Carlos had inherited the house from his father I was told. They only stayed in the top part of the house a few times a year and then only on weekends. Set on the back end of a peninsula far enough off the dead end county road to be quiet, with a small pier at the pointy end and an off limits garage that matched the house halfway between, it was a painting, a work of art, a home. The entrance was from a concrete patio through a sliding glass door to a commercially carpeted cement slab with a reasonable front room, a tiny cubbyhole with a small fridge and stove, and a bar type counter at the kitchen end of the front room, two small bedrooms and a narrow bathroom with a standup shower. Part of the ground floor was taken up by a foyer and stairs leading to the top floor with its separate entrance. On one side was a tidal wetland along the county road and on the other a small canal and boathouse buffering from the nearest neighbor who occupied summers in a modest one floor cottage. Across the narrow paved county road was a forest. Iris rested on gravel next to the patio out of sight from the road.