Charlie is quiet and short, light on words but always quick to smile if you happen to see him out and about fixing something, which is rare. He works a full-time corporate job at a bank an hour away. Nadine is the opposite. She’s loud and eager to talk to you, though never about anything good. Her blond hair is wild and she always looks like she’s about to board a cruise ship to some exotic locale. Her clothes are loose and flowing and bright, and her lips are always hot pink or red. It’s hard not to look at her, though I’m well practiced at it, now that she’s around entirely too much. It’s a little strange, spending your summer vacation in someone’s backyard.

While the lake houses are small and plain, the home that looms over them is like Nadine—tall and wide, and strange in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. It’s the color of a blueberry—not quite blue, not quite purple—with pale green shutters and a white porch that wraps around the front. It looks like something that should be sitting out on a farm, not a lake.

Last summer, when the house seemingly sprouted out of nowhere during the off-season, there were a handful of yard decorations that sprang up with it. A gnome with a red hat at one corner, a whimsical green toadstool by the back stairs leading down into the yard that faces A and B. The strangest was a rooster, almost up to my chin, positioned near the front door. But this year the house seems to have spawned a whole army of tacky ornaments. They’re littering the gardens that circle the house, dotting the mulch with dogs, and tiny girls in frilly dresses, and geese. I can’t catalog them all without staring, and the walk to my dad’s car is over before I can appreciate even a fraction of them. What is going on at Nadine and Charlie’s house? And how could their daughter—pretty, fashionable, always-put-together Lindsay—let this happen?