They were getting close to New Falls, the bus rolling down into the river valley. As they crested the last hill, Maja could see the white steeple of a church rising above the green. They squeezed onto a narrow bridge and slowly crossed the river, and then they were there.

She spotted John, her contractor, leaning against his pickup truck in the gas station parking lot. He was about fifty, with thick gray hair, tan skin, and overalls. He nodded at her, not quite meeting her eye, and opened the passenger door. He didn’t say much on the ten-minute drive over to the house, but then again he’d never been much for small talk.

They pulled down the long gravel drive that led to the house, and Maja got out and looked around. It took her about two minutes to realize that it was a disaster. Until this moment, she’d held out hope that the damage was mostly surface level. But this wasn’t a matter of a cleaning crew and new paint. One whole wall of the living room had been formed from custom-made folding panels of glass, ten feet high. She’d imagined that in the summer they would slide them open, effortlessly creating the flow between indoor and outdoor living that all the design magazines raved about. Now the glass was gone, laying in glinting mounds.

The floor planks, carefully chosen for their width and grain, were already starting to warp from the water that had poured from open faucets all weekend. John had closed all the taps, but the flooding on the second floor was still seeping down through the light fixtures.

John walked her through the house, pointing out the damage as they went. The wall near the stairs was bubbled and damp. All of the drywall would have to be ripped out and replaced, he told her, after the studs were examined for water damage. Upstairs, the master bathroom had been literally torn apart. The toilet was missing, as was the mirror. Dirty footprints crossed the floor, and the sink was clogged with cigarette butts.

“Where is the toilet?” she asked, and John pointed, unexpectedly, out the window.

Maja followed John back down to the kitchen, at a loss for words. The appliances—splurges she had convinced Ted to buy—were filthy, the knobs and handles missing. A cranberry juice bottle lay on its side on the marble counter, a pink stain forming where its contents had spilled onto the white stone and had been absorbed. Hinges where the cabinet doors used to be hung at odd angles, ripped from the wood. She wrinkled her nose. Was that pee in the dishwasher?