MRS. SHAW GREETED ANN AT the door. She was attractive in a severe, weatherworn way, tall but slightly stooped. Her thick, red hair looked like it might have been curly if she hadn’t blow-dried it into submission. She’d pulled it back into a ponytail so tight that it tugged at the sides of her eyes. Her skin was dark and freckled, and a stack of gold bracelets jangled against her thin wrist. She wore a belted Izod polo dress that hung slack off her bony shoulders.

“You must be Ann. I’m so pleased this worked out. I’m Maureen.” She pushed her tortoiseshell eyeglasses higher up the bridge of her nose. “I enjoyed speaking with your mother. She sounds lovely. She says you want to make a little mad money.”

Money might have seemed like a trivial matter to someone like Maureen, but Ann needed it. Back home, Ann took as many babysitting jobs and shifts at Lisa’s Pizza as they’d give her. Her parents told her she’d need to pay for part of college, and she had every intention of going to a school out East, even if it was more expensive. She had her heart set on Boston College and Amherst, maybe even Harvard if she could get in.

Maureen ushered Ann inside, to the center of an airy great room. The dining room, living room, kitchen, and family room were all part of one huge, uncluttered space, not unlike the lobby of a megachurch. Just beyond the giant picture windows was a mound of lush, green lawn, the kind of lawn Ann wasn’t used to seeing in sandy Wellfleet, where the grass grew in patches at best. Beyond the yard, the water sparkled in the bay, a view quite different from her family’s view of the cove. There were no scrappy pitch pines or cacti in sight, no mulberry or beach grass. The water in the distance was seemingly always at high tide, while the cove her family’s house fronted was a mud pit half the time. She looked out the Shaws’ window and saw a different Cape than the one she thought she knew, a Cape that was placid and tame instead of rustic and wild. It made Ann jealous of this big house and their perfect, organized life.

Achingly bright pillows in turquoise and orange punctuated the white expanse of drywall and bleached hardwood floors. A buoy hung from fishing line above the couch. Big navy letters spelled out SHAW on the top and COTTAGE on the bottom. Ann figured they must be important to live in such a big house and to broadcast their name like that. It must really mean something to be a Shaw.

“I love your house,” Ann said.

“Do you?” Maureen asked. She seemed surprised.

“It’s so impressive.”