Maggie stared at the aunt. This could be no other than the aunt. She looked just like Mom but also (in the severe haircut, threadbare jeans and flannel, and unmade-up face) totally different. Bizarro Mom.

From inside the car, Maggie’s mother smiled nervously and raised a hand. She had her car door cracked, but instead of leaping out with her own shout of greeting, she scanned the property and murmured in hollow astonishment, “Holy crap. What a…” The smile looked ready to collapse. “I’m just not sure about this, honey.”

This: the aunt’s unpainted hovel; Lake Ontario, like a molten metal beast gnawing the pebbly shore that crept all the way up to the porch’s crooked steps; the woods on the other side, black and grim and wet; and the yard, oozing mud and collecting puddles, the entire surface looking diseased, covered with lesions and sores.

Mom took a deep breath, like a person preparing to dive into the sea, shot out, and slammed her door. Running in a crouched position, head bowed, arms awning her hair, she zigzagged around the reddish pools that bubbled in the torrent.

Maggie clumsily got out of the car and shut the door. Thunder cracked. Startled, she jumped, lost her footing on the slick ground, and almost fell. “Shit.” Lightning illuminated the lake. It was an arresting sight, like electricity galvanizing a monster. Maggie hurried toward the porch, keeping her eyes on the muck and sand.

Mom and Aunt Wren had disappeared into the house, and when Maggie entered and shoved the wet hair from her eyes, she found the sisters, laughing and crying at the same time, embracing and rocking together and saying in bursts of emotion, “My God, you look just like Mom,” and “I do? Then you do, too,” and “Can you believe it, Min? Fifty. When did we get so old?”

The kitchen was plain—no fancy appliances, not even doors on the cupboards—but big, clean, and fragrant with yeasted bread and damp wood. A pendant lamp hung over a farm table. The copper pots above the stove echoed this single source of light and gave the room the warm hue of a polished penny.

A noisy penny. Rain pinged overhead, indicating a metal roof, and thunder rumbled. Behind the crying, laughing, roof tapping, and sky rumbling, something else added to the racket, a regular shattering from a distant corner of the cabin.

It was like standing inside a percussion instrument.

Aunt Wren pulled away from Mom and nodded at Maggie. She swiped her face with a red plaid sleeve. Then her face—heart-shaped, big-eyed, long-nosed, eerily like Mom’s—softened. The sweetening of the expression prepared Maggie for something like a hug, so when the aunt abruptly turned and shouted over her shoulder, “Jesus Christ, Sam, will you give it a fucking rest? I’ve got company here,” Maggie actually flinched. Her back hit the screen door. It swung open and banged shut.