The rusty hinges moaned when she opened the door of her mom’s dinged-up car. She unfolded herself from the seat she’d been pressed into for what felt like a lifetime, stepped outside onto the crushed oyster shells on the driveway, and inhaled the achingly familiar scent. She’d lived all over the world, but at that moment she felt like she’d never left Wellfleet, never known anything or anyplace else. She even felt known by it. This was where the feeling of her parents lingered.

She popped open the trunk with the decal that read BELIEVE IT, DREAM IT, DO IT! and another one she’d sent her for Christmas one year that read OM. I. GOD. She smiled when she looked at the bag of cat litter her dad kept there to add weight to the rear wheels during the long Midwestern winter. It was such a practical gesture. Her smile disappeared when she surveyed the rest of the contents. Wedged between the spare tire and her tattered backpack were the robin’s-egg-blue boxes from the crematorium. They hadn’t budged during the long ride out. Poppy had felt their presence on every bump and turn, and when she got lonely and tired of listening to her own thoughts she imagined that her parents were really there in the car, alive and engaged in their usual banter, arguing about politics, food, art, and household chores the way they always did.

Now, looking at the stickers with their names on them, she saw that the boxes were deathly quiet and still. When she picked them up she was again surprised by the weight of ashes. Ann’s plan was to dispose of the ashes and put an end to their grief. Ann said they needed to move on, but that didn’t make sense to Poppy. She resented the way Ann made it sound like grief was a simple problem when she knew full well that Ann’s problems were never simple.

She threw her backpack over her shoulder and headed for the door. The old saltbox looked the way she remembered it, although the weathered gray clapboard shingles, moss on the roof, and sagging shutters made it seem private and sad instead of welcoming the way it had when she was a kid, when she felt like she was reuniting with an old friend.

She walked up to the back entrance they always used because the front door had been sealed off ages ago, just a floating door that someone had nailed shut long before she was born. The steps had rotted away and been removed. Nobody knew why. It was one of the house’s many mysteries, something she’d always considered part of the antique charm. Now, according to Ann, whatever Poppy found charming was an “issue.” Ann had emailed her with a whole list of “issues” that would need to be fixed over the course of the summer.