“Not grand,” I say. Grand is twice the size, with twice the windows and chimneys. Grand has stone on the front and a circular drive passing beneath a porte cochere. Grand is what we’d seen on the drive into town. The Aldiss house isn’t that. But it does have location.

“Very beachy,” she says. “I love the turrets.”

“One’s in the living room, one’s in the master bedroom, and one’s in the stairwell leading to the second floor. Did you go up there?”

“Not yet.” She glances at the Sabathian house. “His doesn’t have turrets.”

“It does, only square,” I say, but absently. I’m caught up now by the wide steps leading to the front porch. “We used to take family pictures here each year.”

“Seriously? I want to see.”

“You will.” I don’t say later, because I do mean it this time.

“We don’t have any pictures of little you in New York,” she complains as we start up the steps.

“No. We should.” Leaving here twenty years before, I hadn’t wanted reminders. Actually, I hadn’t realized twenty years would pass before I returned. “Omigod, the rockers. Still rocking. Know how many sunsets we saw from here?” These were good memories. Letting them open, a morning glory unfurling, I drop Joy’s hand, rush to the nearest rocker, and plop down.

“Mom.”

She wants to go inside, but I’m not ready. Closing my eyes, I rock. Wood creaks on wood, a long familiar, eternally soothing sound.

Then comes another creak, this one the screen door. “Here you are,” Anne says. I open my eyes to find her rubbing her hands together. “Okay. Dinner. I’m grilling steak, but are you still not eating meat, Joy?”

Mercifully, Joy is gracious. “It’s okay. I’ll eat whatever else you have.”

“Your grandfather likes brown rice with his steak. Does that work for you?”

“Awesome,” she says and reaches for my hand.

I want to resist. I could stay out here forever, where there’s freedom and fresh air. But I can only put off the inevitable so long. Letting myself be pulled from the rocker, I take the screen door from Anne and follow them inside.

I don’t want to be here … don’t want to be here … don’t want to …

The thought reverberates outward from my brain to my nerve endings, because nothing here has changed, not the misty seascape on the wall, the time-stained Berber underfoot, the slant of late-day light spilling through mullioned glass—and not my sense of being an outlier in this house.

But I am here. And wallowing in the why of it accomplishes nothing.

Tamping down my unease, I breathe deeply of the sea smell that may be more faint here than outside, but that walls can’t completely block. Salt air works for me. I cling to it for strength as I look around.