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.

I checked closets. Cabinets. The attic access panel. Every drawer in every room.

By the time I got to my old bedroom—still small, still facing east, still painted the faded pale green I had chosen when I was fourteen because I thought it looked like sea glass—I was shaking hard enough that I had to sit on the edge of the bed.

At least the bed was still mine. Narrow iron frame. Worn pine nightstand. A shelf lined with the ridiculous carved wooden gulls my father used to buy from roadside stands before Diana entered our lives and made him allergic to anything unsophisticated.

One of the gulls was missing its beak. I stared at it for a long moment, then realized the break was old. I had broken it myself at fifteen while trying to dust and balance an open paperback on my knee. My mother had laughed and said, “Perfect. Now it has character.”

I put my hand over my mouth.