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.

The neighbor three houses down, a retired literature professor named June with white hair and a permanent linen overshirt, came over carrying tomato seedlings and a story about my mother rescuing her from a panic attack during the great nor’easter of 2008 by pouring bourbon into tea and announcing, “If the roof goes, at least we’ll be warm and interesting.”

Each memory rearranged something in me.

Diana had spent years trying to convince me that my presence was disruptive, excessive, unnecessary. But in town I was not an intrusion. I was continuity.

In June, Madeline called.

I almost didn’t answer. Then I did.

“Hi,” she said, and immediately sounded as if she regretted using a word too small for the distance between us.

“Hi.”

There was a pause, ocean faint in the background on my end, traffic on hers.

“I’m moving out,” she said.

I leaned against the kitchen counter. “From the condo?”

“Yes.”

I waited.

“She’s impossible right now,” Madeline said flatly. “Every conversation is about betrayal. Or image. Or how people in town are treating her differently. Apparently being caught trying to evict the legal owner from her own house has somehow damaged her social ease.”