“Just follow the course,” Nate continues in his formal detached way. “Play by the rules, just like our attorneys have outlined, and we’ll both get the new start we want. You’ll get a fortune from this place, and we’ll see a nice windfall from the sale of our home in Lake Forest. You’re sitting on a gold mine if you sell now. This place has seen better days. It needs a new roof, new plumbing, new life...” He stops for emphasis. “New owners.” Nate smiles and continues. “The Realtor will find some sucker who falls for its—what do you always call it?—‘charm’ before it falls apart.”

I look at him, my mouth open.

Though my parents left Cozy Cottage to me, and Nate is entitled to none of its proceeds, I agreed to sell it because he convinced me that the rules were stacked against me.

On your salary, you will go broke maintaining the cottage and paying its taxes, Nate told me over and over. And how often will you use it anymore? How often will Evan use it?

“I need to smudge this place,” I suddenly say out loud, as much to myself as him. “Get some better energy in here.”

Nate laughs dismissively. “You and your sage, and crystals, and beads and essential oils. And what did you ever do with that yoga certification, which took so much time and cost so much money?” he asks. “The only thing that new age BS will do is make the cottage smell bad for potential buyers.” He turns and looks at me, as if seeing me for the first time. “You’re not the person I married, Adeleine.”

Nate walks away, the floor creaking. The door slams behind him, and the cottage seems to exhale relief with his exit.

Play by the rules, I think. But I’ve played by the rules the last thirty years, and where did that get me? I’m not the one who changed. You tried to change me. I’m the same woman you married.

I turn, and that’s when I notice that the Cottage Rules sign my parents had hand-painted on old barn wood so long ago is hanging askew, just like my life.

Who knew that so much could change in just over a decade?

My son is now in college, my parents are gone, and my husband and I are divorcing. Even my job—an ad executive creating cute slogans for corporations who poison the earth—is killing me. Everything my parents taught me seems to be fading away, just like the sparklers they used to hand out when we’d arrive.

I begin to walk out, but stop on the woven rug my grandmother made long ago, the colorful, circular one that has been in this same spot by the door for decades, collecting sand. I am unable to leave the sign askew.