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.

At sunset, I carried a chair onto the porch—the wrong chair, a folding aluminum one from the garage because the reading chair was still missing—and sat wrapped in the quilt while the sky flamed orange and rose over the water.

My phone had been buzzing on and off all day. I had ignored it.

Now, with the light thinning and the first chill of evening rising from the dunes, I checked.

Three missed calls from Diana.
Two from my father.
One voicemail from an unknown number I knew was probably some cousin Diana had recruited into concern.
A text from Madeline sent three hours earlier.

I’m not defending what happened. I just need you to know Dad is at the hotel and Mom is losing it. She keeps saying everyone betrayed her. Also the reading chair is in the storage unit on Route 6. Unit 214. The code is my birthday backward.

I stared at the message for a long time.

Then another came.

And the shell lamp from your room is there too. She said it was tacky.

I actually laughed.