My plan was to knock down the wall separating the kitchen and living room, put in white cabinets and a couple of rough wooden shelves (so on trend), and make or buy a butcher block island for the middle. Small, yes, but also smart. Buff out those old floors, stain them dark walnut, spring for a new couch, and hang a Sadie Frost original abstract on the wall. Throw pillows. Rocking chair from my old room. A coffee table made from some cool wood. Bamboo and rice-paper blinds so the serial killers couldn’t see in. Sand the rust out of the bathtub, bleach the shit out of the tile floor, buy some bright blue towels, and voilà. A summertime jewel.

You’d think with an architect sister, I might get some help. You’d be wrong. Juliet was weird lately. Jumpy. I invited her over one night, hoping for some advice and (cough) sisterly bonding, but she said she had to spend time working on Sloane’s reading skills. Fair enough.

Time to take down that wall. “Okay, Pepper Puppy, stand back,” I said, and she cocked her head at me, pricking her silky ears. “Maybe you should go outside,” I said, remembering that people usually wore respirators for this kind of thing. I let her out; she never ran away, good doggy that she was. Then I tied a dishcloth over my face, cranked up Prince for company—“I Would Die 4 U”—and got a-swingin’.

Boom! Ohh. Therapy and home improvement rolled into one. Boom! Swinging a sledgehammer was fun!

And honestly, it didn’t take that long, probably because the house was older than dirt, the Sheetrock crumbly with years of humidity and mold. Even the two-by-fours came down easily enough, crooked old nails and bits of other types of wood testifying that the house had been built by someone without a license.

Twenty minutes later, I stood in a much bigger area, a pile of rubble at my feet. “Take that, Jules,” I said, and texted her a picture of my destroyed wall.

DIY, baby!

Then I turned off the music, went outside to get the dust out of my lungs. My dishcloth was covered in nastiness, which I hopefully hadn’t inhaled.

Pepper lay on the lawn, gnawing on a stick, which I pried out of her mouth and threw.

“Fetch!” I said, and she raced after it, picked it up and lay down again. “Bring it here, Pepper! Here! Come! Come on!”

Nothing. Well, we all had our talents. I sat on the front steps of the porch and felt the stillness settle over me, seep into my bones.

The air was heavy with the smell of brackish water. The tide was coming in, the river rushing along the reed-filled banks, and the sunset was setting up to be glorious.