Although she disapproves of the coldness of the new home, she is grateful to be spared the house she once knew. The replacement is tall and narrow, almost prisonlike, reminding her of one of Louise Bourgeois’s “personnages” sculptures she saw at the Tate Modern when Bayard took her to London to celebrate their six-month anniversary. He surprised her with tickets for a sightseeing tour on one of those awful double-decker omnibuses. Sherri lied and said she had a migraine in order to avoid it.

Giant windows face every which way. It makes sense, she supposes, to want to optimize those views, but the openness changes everything. Sherri is so overcome with memories that she swears she can almost see her old self there, so young, sitting by the bonfire with her friends. She pictures Goldie tapping the front door with her paw, asking to come inside. And she’s overcome with the image of Arthur, shirtless and wet and alive, walking toward her from the pier.

OK, Sherri thinks, enough. Enough! She wants to leave. She’s been there, she’s seen it, yet she is transfixed. The door opens, and a woman walks out. She’s younger than Sherri by a decade or two. Her blond hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail. She’s about to go for a run. How strange to think of other people living here in this other house on this sacred ground, yet she looks at Sherri as though she’s the imposter.

“Can I help you?”

Sherri wants to dislike this woman who had something to do with the bulldozing of her past, but she seems harmless. For her, this is just another beautiful summer day. She’ll get some exercise, invite some friends over, cook out on the grill, cruise around the lake in a pontoon—

“I’m sorry,” Sherri says. “I thought I was lost. Everything’s changed. I—I used to know someone who lived here. In the old house. A long time ago.”

“Do you mean Arthur?” There it was, the name Sherri hardly ever spoke out loud. It startles her to hear it.

“Yeah. He’s—I’m—”

“Hang on a moment, will you? Let me get my husband,” she says, running back to the door. She opens it and yells, “Arthur? Arthur! Come outside for a second.”

There was no way Arthur could be alive. Sherri breaks out into a sweat. This was like an episode of The Twilight Zone. She holds the key to the rental car tight in her hand, ready to make her escape. She needs to leave this weirdness behind. And then—

Arthur.

She gasps.