My stepmother called just as the day was folding into evening, her voice dripping with a satisfaction so sharp I could almost see the smile stretching across her face. She told me, with deliberate precision, that I would never set foot in the family beach house again—that every lock had already been changed.

For a second I thought she might truly refuse. She had that rigid, almost manic stillness she got when reality failed to cooperate with the story she had prepared. Then she turned toward the front door, fumbled in her tote bag, pulled out a ring of keys, and yanked the wrong one hard enough that the new brass lock rattled.

The locksmith took a step forward. “That key’s not going to—”

“I know how keys work,” she snapped.

It didn’t fit.

Her fingers shook. She tried another. Then another. At last she thrust the whole ring toward Donnelly as though it had personally betrayed her.

“Open it.”

He took the keys, selected the right one, opened the lock, then glanced at Evelyn. “You want the old cylinders reinstalled?”

“I do,” Evelyn said.

He nodded and set down his toolbox.