On Monday, workers arrived to do some of the work she’d requested: a crew to fix the roofs, a crew to repaint the buildings and outbuildings, landscapers to weed-whack the sculpture garden and clear away overgrown brush. Though she was glad to see things getting done, Marianne felt crowded by their vehicles and paint cans and coolers and half-empty bottles of Gatorade. She felt even more crowded by their general busyness, which was measurable and obvious, while she sorted piles of paper into different stacks in an air-conditioned motel room with daytime television on mute.

She found a bicycle in one of the tool sheds, powder blue, with rusty fenders and fat, deflated tires she managed to mostly inflate with a small hand pump. It had been years since she had been on a bike, though her Brooklyn neighbors tootled around helmetlessly, the soles of their flip-flopped feet black with dirt. This bike had a wide seat and graceful handlebars that didn’t require you to hunch over. It was the perfect vehicle for cruising the neighborhood. Marianne waved good-bye to the roofers as she rode past the front entrance.

Across from the Ranch was a Kangaroo gas station where Marianne sometimes bought snacks and tampons. A few miles to the north was a stretch of identical T-shirt-and-beach-towel warehouses, dimly lit shell shops, the Publix—but turning right, then left, she could ride through a development of new houses that sat on the east side of the beach road. Even before she made the turn, past the elaborate pale-brick entrance, she could see that they were still under construction, the plywood a garish orange against the cloudless sky, the shingled roofs draped with tarps. On closer inspection, she realized none of the houses had workers hanging Sheetrock or laying flooring. They were all large, empty, half-finished shells. The tarps held standing water. Sun-faded trash littered the short weedy drives.

Marianne’s crews worked until dusk, then packed up with the speed of a television home-improvement show. They picked up all the bottles and coolers before they left, and Marianne noticed that things were looking neater, less abandoned. She figured they were glad to have the work. “Back tomorrow, miss,” the landscape boss called to her cheerfully. Marianne waved good-bye.

“How’d it go?” Mark asked on Skype later. It was his custom to pace around with a headset, doing other things while she struggled to keep his attention. The computer’s camera faced an empty chair, and through his window Marianne could see the early-evening skyline.

“I guess it went fine,” Marianne said. She told him about the empty development.

“Yeah,” he said. “That developer ran out of money—too bad. Someone else will come along. Look how close it is to the water.”

“How much is our renovation costing?”