“I’m game.” He told Sailor he’d soon return. The dog barked and settled in his seat.

“Follow me.” As she climbed the stairs, his steady footfalls followed close behind. She opened the door. “Welcome to the jungle.”

Inside, he wiped his feet on the mat and removed his hat before he surveyed the dark interior crammed full of boxes and rescued hotel furniture. He turned first to the kitchen, with the avocado-green appliances. “This would be a gut job.”

Ivy stared at the stove with the cracked knob and broken clock. She was ten when she’d grabbed a thin towel, reached for the handle of a hot cast-iron pan, and lifted it toward the cooktop. The heat seared through the fabric and burned her fingers. She dropped the pan, and it hit the knob. Ruth immediately pulled her toward the sink and ran cold water on her blistering fingers.

“Wish I had a nickel for all the times I burned my hands in the kitchen,” Ruth said. “I was about your age when I started helping my daddy cook at the Seaside Resort.”

Ivy hissed in a breath. “What was your dad like?”

“He was a quiet soul,” she said. “In the summers he was working in the kitchen, and in the winter, doing maintenance repairs. The man never stopped moving.”

“How old were you when he died?” Ivy had become fascinated with judging the age-appropriateness of someone’s death since her mother’s passing five years ago. Over thirty? Sixty? Eighty? There was a line dividing too young from just right, but she hadn’t decided where it was.

“I was twenty-two.” Ruth shut off the water, reached for a red-and-white checkered cotton dish towel, and carefully wrapped it around Ivy’s fingers.

Ivy shifted at the memory, reminding herself she didn’t have the luxury of saving a forty-year-old stove, even one with memories. “The cabinets are dark, but they were made from salvaged wood from a shipwreck by my great-grandfather.”

“Do you know which wreck?”

“It was a schooner that went down right after the First World War. A local guy harvested the wood and sold it to my grandfather for two dollars. That’s very illegal now, but then, anything on the beach was fair game for harvesting.”

He opened a cabinet door, sending a collection of plastic storage dishes tumbling down.

Ivy gathered the tubs, most of which didn’t have tops. “Sorry about that.”

“Safe to say these aren’t heirlooms.”

“If there’s a market for plastic storage containers, then I’m going to be rich.” She shoved the containers back inside and quickly closed the door before they tumbled out.

“The cabinets are solid, and the history is unique. They need a good cleaning and maybe rearranging so that they don’t block the view of the living room and the stone fireplace.”

She liked his idea, but future cottage renovations were not her business. “I leave all that to you or whoever buys the house.”

“Have you thought about the rest of your life?”