“Where’s Ann?” Poppy asked. All her life, this was the first thing she needed to know each day. You set your clock to Ann, as her father said.

“She’s off babysitting for the haute bourgeoisie, as usual. Today she’s taking the boys all the way to Plimoth Plantation for an ancestor role-playing workshop or something.”

“God, that sounds totally horrible.”

“I know, doesn’t it? Those boys aren’t going to know what to do with themselves when they’re set loose in the real world.”

“What’s Dad doing?”

“He took Michael to the Historical Society.”

“He’s taking Michael to the Historical Society?”

“I guess the poor guy is getting dragged into your father’s ‘research.’”

He and Poppy used to visit the Wellfleet Historical Society with a pile of yellow legal pads, taking notes and stuffing them into the accordion files with folders labeled HOUSE, LAND, COVE, LORE, and RANDOM BULLSHIT in his distinctive block handwriting. Her father was always asking questions: Why did they stop farming on the land? Why’d they dredge the pond and turn it into a cove? Was it called Drummer Cove because that was the local name for a type of flounder, or was it named for the traveling salesmen who used to stay at the old inn on the property next door, who were called “drummers,” as in “to drum up business”? And what about the house? The Barnstable County Courthouse had burned down sometime in the 1800s, so there was no way for him to confirm the date it had been built. There must be documents to authenticate the age, he said. There must be.

Poppy wasn’t that interested in his research—or rather, she was, because she loved the house and the cove, but it was summer, and the last place she wanted to spend her morning was in that dark building filled with old ship captains’ relics, whaling gear, and dour black-and-white photographs in chipped mahogany frames. She preferred to practice tai chi with her mom in the yard. Before she messed up her ankle, they’d gotten better at memorizing the movements, and at moving gently—as if with the wind and the water, as Lu, her mother’s instructor, had taught them. Poppy had even gotten to the point where she could still her mind when she was deep in her practice, or find jing.

Poppy found the serenity amazing, the integration of the mind with the body. Ann thought it was all a joke. She made fun of them when they practiced. She’d sneak up behind Poppy and yank down her shorts, or spray water at her through the hose when she was most absorbed in their poses, laughing her infectious laugh.