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.

This was what Diana never understood. She thought value existed where money had touched it most recently. She could not imagine a house being defended for reasons that had nothing to do with sale price or prestige or the chance to stage a better Christmas card. She didn’t know what to do with memory except bulldoze it and call the result an upgrade.

When I finally stood again and opened the closet, the breath left my body.

My mother’s cedar chest was gone.

For a second I simply stared at the empty floor, unable to understand what I was seeing. The cedar chest had sat at the back of that closet for as long as I could remember. It was where my mother kept winter blankets, old photographs, a box of letters tied with ribbon, a pair of my grandmother’s gloves, a baby dress of mine with one loose pearl button, and a stack of papers she once told me mattered less than the stories attached to them, which of course meant they mattered very much.

It was gone.

I turned so fast I nearly knocked over the nightstand.

“Evelyn.”

She appeared in the doorway almost immediately, taking in my face before her eyes followed mine to the empty closet floor.

“What was there?” she asked.