“We’ll never let you go.” Her mother reached back and squeezed Ann’s knee like she meant it literally. Ann swatted her hand away and frowned, even though she wanted to be nice to her mother, because her mother was always nice to her.

“Tell you what, Ann with a Plan.” That was her father’s name for her, because she’d always been so determined, and so focused on her next steps. “How about we just drop you off and leave. We won’t lurk.”

“Yes!” Ann said. “Thank you.”

“We wouldn’t think of embarrassing you in front of Mrs. Shaw.” It was Ann’s mother who had taken her call while Ann was at Gull Pond with Michael and Poppy. Michael could swim about as well as both of them now, and he could outpace her both on the land and in the water. When Ann called back, Mrs. Shaw sounded breathless. “I was just thrilled to see your sign on the bulletin board. I’m positively desperate. You know how it is with two rambunctious boys and a household to manage, and my husband is hardly ever around and we have all these visitors and activities. Exhausting!”

Her father whistled when he pulled up to the house—not an appreciative whistle, but the kind of whistle he’d make if he passed a bad car accident, a whistle that seemed to say, Look at that disaster. The Shaws’ house was huge, dwarfing the still large but comparatively smaller houses next door. He double-checked the address. “I guess this really is the place,” he said. “Geez.”

“Oh dear,” Connie said. “Look how it blocks the view of the bay. I’ll bet their neighbors hate them. It’s so big … and so brown.”

Her dad said, “That’s a ‘fuck you’ house if I ever saw one.”

Ann thought the house was awesome because it was so massive, and so different from the homes she was used to seeing in Wellfleet. It reminded her of one of the big, new houses she saw in subdivisions in Mequon, a wealthy community north of Milwaukee where some of the kids she’d met in the Model UN lived. The Shaws’ house was neither charming and old nor sleek and modern; it was the kind of house that was simply meant to impress. It was newer but not original, massive but not grand.

Ann said goodbye to her parents quickly and slipped out of the car. She walked down the long, curving driveway in the shadow of the enormous house. Her father’s car engine was still idling. She turned around and mouthed Go away until he backed off and drove away in the same direction he’d come.