For some reason, I wasn’t able to sleep in my parents’ bedroom or the guest room Nate and I shared for so long. It didn’t seem right. So I chose my childhood bedroom, the one Evan has slept in since he was a baby. I pull the covers around me even tighter and survey the room. Photos of Evan in the cottage and on the beach, from toddler to teen, growing up right in front of my eyes. Photos of me doing the same. The sun glints in my eyes, and I tilt my head and notice a common denominator in all the photos: sunshine. I smile and angle my head back into the light, closing my eyes and letting the sun warm me.

“Okay, Adie Lou,” I say to myself. “Time to get moving.”

I’m supposed to be meeting my contractor at 11, and I’ve barely prepared much less made coffee to be halfway coherent.

I step out of bed and the cold of the house slaps me. “Brrrr!” I yell. I try to recall all of the clothes I have left here—all summery things, I think—and then rifle through my suitcases. Nothing I hurriedly threw in seems warm enough.

Why did I pack as if I were going on a weekend getaway instead of forever?

I open a drawer in an old green-gray dresser—that’s been painted probably a dozen different colors in my lifetime—and pull out a pair of Evan’s thermal socks. I open another drawer and yank out a pair of his boyhood sweatpants, and then open the closet, stand on my tiptoes and stretch as far as I can—my knees popping—to pull one of Evan’s old high school hoodies from a shelf with my fingertips. I turn on the bathroom light and look in the mirror. I lean in even closer, examining my face.

“Who am I?” I ask the mirror, my breath fogging it.

I feel rested yet exhausted. Excited but depressed. Happy and sad. Alone yet comforted.

“Essentially you’re a complete mess,” I say to my reflection.

I run a hand through my hair, which is flying around my head as if I just underwent electroshock therapy. I pull open the cabinet and find an ancient hair tie from a time when Evan grew his hair to his shoulders, and yank my own shoulder-length locks into it, which immediately gives me the look of one of those demented, too-old babysitters in every Lifetime movie.

I wash my face, grab my overnight bag and pull some moisturizer out of it. I smooth some on my face and neck. I reach back into it and pull out my essential oils, what Nate called my “voodoo potions.”

There is something about my oils that calms me, centers me, seems to protect me.

The same feeling I get from being at this cottage, I realize.