Brad started cooking dinner, a Polish dish called haluški that Brad said was a secret family recipe. Soon the kitchen was filled with the smell of cabbage and pork. Noah put her dad’s Gene Krupa album on the record player, and Poppy lit candles and turned on the string lights. The house, which had seemed so empty and abandoned this past year, felt warm and golden, almost like a home again, only Ann felt unwelcome.

“Noah, c’mere,” Brad said. “I’m going to teach you how to make this the way my babcia taught me.” Noah was eager for a cooking lesson, and hungry for attention from Brad, who drove a motorcycle, played a mandolin, and ran a machine shop. He told him stories about the characters he’d hired to work for him and the rats on the shop floor.

With nothing better to do, Ann started wiping down the walls so she could get them ready to paint. Poppy sat at the table in the area between the kitchen and the living room drinking wine. Occasionally, Ann would find her gaze cast in her direction. Ann thought about trying to strike up a conversation, but Poppy quickly looked back at her crossword puzzle. Poppy’s silence was out of character. So was her anger. She was the one who’d been gone all these years, the one who was AWOL when their parents died. Poppy knew something, and so did Brad, and that was why they were so cool to Ann. But what did they know?

“I’m worried about all these cracks in the walls,” Ann said. “There might be a problem with the foundation.”

“The foundation is fine,” Poppy said, her voice scolding, as if Ann were some kid who was worried about a monster under her bed.

“It can’t be fine. The house is over two hundred years old. There are problems, you know there are.”

“It looks OK to me,” Brad said, “and I know a thing or two about houses.” He’d set some plates on the table. “The walls are amazingly plumb for a structure this old.” He gently lifted the album off the record player and leafed through her dad’s album collection as if it were his own. “How about some dinner music? Look at this Grant Green. The LT Series. This is better than the Blue Note edition. I wonder where your dad picked this up.” The song “Solid” began to play, a song far too tinkling and light for Ann’s dour mood. Ann’s father called songs like that one “Sunday morning music.” For a moment, it felt as if he’d walked into the room to join them. Ann could picture him exactly, right down to his soft T-shirts, paint-stained carpenter shorts, and tattered sandals, his big toenail always split like a piece of old wood.