Just for the hell of it, I go to the kitchen sink and give the tap a try, releasing an angry hiss of air. So before anything can happen, I have to get the power on and the water working. Nothing unexpected, but I still feel like a child sent in to do an adult’s job. Being the youngest meant there was always someone ahead of me to take charge, to boss me around and make things happen.

Now I’m the only one left, and I can’t help but feel like it shouldn’t have been me. I was the fuck-up in the family, the scattered one who rarely saw anything through to the end, who always tried to get out of any responsibility. How on earth am I supposed to handle all of this?

I pull my phone from my pocket. I’ve already been here for an hour and gotten nothing accomplished. A photo of my daughters is my lock screen. I stare at their faces until I feel like an adult again—their mere existence a reminder that I’ve been in charge somewhere in my life, so why not here as well?

In the storage room at the very back of the cottage is the fuse panel. Our reserves are still lined up neatly on the wooden shelves—cans of food, matches, a few bottles of French wine, cleaning products. Pulling open the door to the fuse panel, I see that the main fuse block has been taken out. I find it sitting beside the metal box that contains spare fuses, fit it into place, and push hard, grateful for the first time that my mother made both me and May learn how everything in this cottage worked.

She was militant about it. “If you partake in the enjoyment of the place, you must also take on the responsibility of caring for it,” she said time and time again, when we were made to wash the windows, scrub the floors, weed the garden, change blown fuses, prepare the place for winter. The caretaker, West, did most of the yard work and fixed things now and again, but she insisted on doing the majority of it herself. Like a protective mother whose baby was a cottage, she just couldn’t stop fussing.

I pull the chord of the bare lightbulb hanging above me and almost cry out in joy when it fills with light. Back in the kitchen, I’m greeted with the gentle hum of the refrigerator.

Encouraged by my first success, I look for the key to the pump room. The next task—getting the water turned on. If I can manage that, I can pretty much manage anything.

MAY