The early morning fog in coastal Massachusetts didn’t roll—it wrapped. It moved like something alive, winding around telephone poles and dunes, blurring streetlights into hesitant halos. As my Uber wound its way along the familiar coastal road, I pressed my forehead against the cool window and inhaled deeply, almost able to smell the ocean through the glass.
The landscape shifted from town to sea. One moment there were clapboard houses and weathered storefronts; the next, the horizon opened up, and there it was: a sheet of gray-green water, restless and infinite.
Then, through the thickening mist, I saw it.
The house.
My heart twisted.
From a distance, it looked both completely unchanged and deeply wrong at the same time. The wraparound porch was still there, hugging the front and side of the house like a protective arm. The weathered shingles, once a proud gray, looked freshly painted, losing some of their charm in the glossy uniformity. The white railing had been replaced with something sleeker, more modern, and utterly out of place.
The car pulled into the crushed-shell driveway that crunched under the tires.