Denial was Poppy’s best option. She decided to pretend this would be just another summer, and the house would always be there, and her parents were on a quick trip to the Stop & Shop in Orleans and would be right back. Only it wasn’t even summer yet. It was the first week of April, and the damp cold went straight to her bones. That first night at the Cape house she did manage to find the breaker and turn on the lights, but she didn’t know how to turn on the heat, and when she went to the bathroom she discovered that the toilet bowl was drained, empty. Fortunately, her father had left heaps of wood in the woodpile outside the back door. She sat under a sleeping bag in front of the fireplace, dreading the moment she’d have to emerge from her cocoon and go to the bathroom or actually do something. She could hear mice scampering between the walls; maybe that was the life she’d felt in the house when she first arrived?

Ann ditched her, but the next morning Noah arrived to spend the weekend with her.

“Aunt Poppy!” he said, his voice lower than she’d imagined it would be. He was awkward at first, and so was she: How could this be the same little guy who’d squealed with delight when she’d given him a bath? She hadn’t seen him since he was six. He had Ann’s precise features—her sculpted, thin nose and wide-set eyes—but he was sturdy in a way that neither Michael nor Ann was, barrel-chested and thick, with long, luscious blue-dyed bangs and dark brown hair.

Their connection was instant—two free spirits who cared little about what other people thought of them. Blue hair? Awesome—and even more awesome that Ann could raise a child so comfortable in his own skin. Noah told her he had spent as much time as he could with his grandparents every summer, and she could see her father’s influence when she watched Noah work the house. In no time, he got the water running and the old boiler chugged to life. They watched classic films and sat next to each other on the couch playing games on Noah’s laptop. He showed Poppy how to use Garage Band and he’d parse out the separate tracks for the mournful-sounding songs he’d recorded. Poppy thought his music was brilliant, like everything else he did. But what really united them was their love of the house.

“I don’t understand why my mom would want to sell,” Noah said. “This place is perfect. And it fits us. It’s, like, us.”

“I know,” Poppy said. “I can’t even imagine anyone else living here.”

“I hate them.”