Those summer weeks had been idyllic for a tomboy like Drue. She spent long sunny days swimming, bodysurfing and skateboarding with Brian, Charley and Davy Harrell, and evenings fishing and crabbing from the Johns Pass Bridge with Papi. In those days, she was rarely indoors.

Now, on the lot where George and Helen Maroulis had tended their basil, tomato and banana pepper plants, there was a boxy, towering gray concrete three-level contemporary house so large it completely blotted out the view of the Gulf behind it.

And the Harrells’ home had somehow morphed into a pink stucco faux-Mediterranean villa, with terra-cotta roof tiles and a turret that looked straight out of the Alhambra.

But there, crouching on the sand, dwarfed in between the pair of magnificent mansions, was Papi’s humble place, easily distinguished from its splendid neighbors by its complete lack of splendor—and the blue tarp covering the roof.

Everything about the cottage, from the peeling blue paint on the cedar shingles, to the dust-covered windows, seemed sad, saggy and forlorn. It was a far cry from the tidy, trim home on which her grandparents lavished with love and attention.

Papi was so proud of this cottage. After tobacco imports from Cuba were embargoed in 1962, shuttering most of the cigar factories in Tampa, including the one he’d worked in most of his adult life, Alberto Sanchez had operated a small neighborhood grocery store in Ybor City. Somehow, he’d managed to save enough money to begin building this small summer cottage, and eventually, when their only daughter, Sherri, married and left home, Papi and Nonni, whose given name was Anna, retired and moved full-time to Sunset Beach.

A blast from the car directly behind hers, a gleaming white convertible, let her know she was blocking the narrow road. How long had she been stopped there, just staring at the house?

She gave an apologetic wave and pulled the Bronco into the rutted sand driveway.

Drue picked up the key chain her father had given her and looked wistfully at the cottage.

She thought of that last summer, more than twenty years ago, when Brice had pulled into the driveway and beeped his horn, impatient to load her onto the Greyhound bus back to her mother in Fort Lauderdale, and out of his and Joan’s hair. Papi had stowed her suitcase in the back of Brice’s BMW, and at the last minute, Nonni had tucked something into the pocket of her shorts and whispered in her ear, “This is for you. Come back whenever. You call, and Papi and I will come get you.” It wasn’t until she’d climbed into the front seat of her father’s car that she’d thought to examine her grandmother’s gift. It was a fifty-dollar bill, wrapped around the key to the cottage.

But she hadn’t come back. Until now.

Brice had warned her not to expect much.