17. June
JUNE
The drive to the beach house feels longer than usual.
Maybe it’s the wind, maybe it’s the hangover from too many late nights, or maybe it’s the way the road curves and dips, as if it’s trying to shake us loose before we ever make it to the end.
Meredith has a death grip on the wheel, her focus absolute, which is code for I am not ready for this, but don’t you dare say so.
We don’t talk on the drive. Not about her moving in with Eddie, not about the Shack, not about the endless questions we have about the federal case against Everwell. The silence in the car is a third presence, reminding me with every bump that this isn’t a homecoming—it’s an autopsy.
The house looks smaller than I remember.
The paint’s faded, the porch rail chipped at the corner where Dad used to lean with his coffee, planning out the world one wave at a time.
There’s a strip of blue sky over the roofline, but it doesn’t make the place feel any brighter.
It just makes the windows look more like eyes watching us approach.
Meredith parks close enough to block the mailbox because, of course, she’s still trying to control something about this moment—what, I don’t know. She kills the engine, but neither of us moves.
“Ready?” I ask out of habit.
Her jaw tics. “Does it matter?”
Touché.
We get out. The air off the ocean is crisper here, sharpened by saltwater and wet grass, but that’s not what grabs me.
It’s the garden, the one Mom used to rule like her own little monarchy.
The hydrangeas just past the cobblestones are a horror show.
Gone are the wild blue-and-lavender globes, the kind she would cut for the kitchen vase.
What’s left are brittle leaves, petals gone papery and color-stained, the stalks hunched in on themselves.
Neglect isn’t just a sight; it’s a statement.
Next to the hydrangeas, the window boxes hang limp, dirt-cracked and dry.
Not even a weed is brave enough to fill the vacancy.
My mom’s favorite corner—her “display piece,” as she called it—is dead on arrival.
But somehow, it’s the porch’s disarray that hits me hardest. It’s the place all three of us girls used to sit and talk about boys, complain about our parents, and just be kids.
I drag my sleeve over my eyes, blaming the wind. Meredith notices, but she doesn’t say anything, likely afraid I’ll hear in her voice what she sees on my face.
We head up the walk, letting the crunch of gravel fill the silence.
At the front door, I hesitate. The wreath is still there—a mess of faded ribbon and what once might’ve been an optimistic spray of dried roses.
Nobody’s bothered to take it down. I can’t decide if that’s a kindness or a middle finger to the passage of time.
Meredith reaches for the bell, but her hand pauses an inch away.
“I can do it,” I offer, reaching past her.
She lets me, half a sigh escaping as she folds her arms.
I press the button. Somewhere inside, a faint chime echoes—hollow, like the house is already empty. We wait.
Footsteps, slow and uneven. Then the door opens.
I almost don’t recognize Richard, and suddenly, the state of our childhood home makes more sense.
He’s always been the kind of man who could make a GQ cover model look underdressed—crisp shirts, that silver hair, every move calculated so you never got a glimpse of what lived underneath.
Now, he’s wearing a sweater that sags at the elbows.
His pants are rumpled, one cuff still bunched from where he clearly just yanked them on.
His chin shows two days’ worth of stubble, and the line of his cheek has collapsed into something akin to jowls and age.
But the real shock is his eyes. They’re red-rimmed, like maybe he’s been crying, but you’d lose money betting on that.
He blinks at us for a second, like he’s surprised we exist. “Meredith. June.” His voice is quieter than I expect, stripped of the condescension and cold.
“Please. Come in.” He steps back, holding the door with a hand that actually trembles.
Not a performance. Not a play. Just a man too tired to fake it anymore.
The entryway hits me like a punch. There are boxes everywhere.
Cardboard stacked in columns up to the light fixture, packing tape slashed across the edges, Sharpie scribble in block letters: KITCHEN.
DEN. LIVING ROOM. There are bags of half-used bubble wrap, rolls of paper jammed into an umbrella stand, and the battered bin marked “TRASH” already overflowing with things nobody wanted to keep.
Just to the left, I catch sight of a pile of framed family photos, their faces turned toward the wall like they’re hiding. Some aren’t even wrapped yet. Just stacked, awaiting their fate. And there, Mom’s smile peeks out from under a layer of dust.
Meredith inhales, the set of her shoulders telegraphing every curse she wants to spit.
I follow, stepping over a stray box on the welcome mat. The hall smells nothing like my mother—no furniture polish, no perfume, just the dry, pulpy scent of cardboard, and the faint tang of coffee that’s been left on a burner.
It is, in its own way, a disaster.
Richard hovers a step behind us, wringing his hands. “I’m sorry about the mess. I…didn’t get very far.”
Meredith’s gaze goes laser-focused. “How long have you been boxing things up?”
He shrugs, a motion more bone than muscle. “A week. Maybe two. It blurs together.”
She doesn’t let him off the hook. “Were you planning to let us know?” Her tone could cut glass.
Richard’s answer is another shrug, but weaker. “I assumed you’d want the house. Or at least, what’s left of it.” He lets the words float, then dissolves into apology. “It’s not my place anymore.”
I look at the staircase—more boxes there, some labeled “Eleanor’s closet,” some just blank, as if the contents are too private to risk noting. There’s a heap of coats by the old bench, not hung up, just collapsed. The air in here is ten degrees colder than outside.
My brain endeavors to name every sensation at once—rage, sadness, the urge to grab Richard by the front of his sweatshirt and demand he tell us why he’s quitting without even a fight. Instead, I cross my arms. “You’re really just…leaving? Like this?”
The man spent most of our lives pushing us away, and now he’s just giving up. I don’t get it.
Richard presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. His voice is so small I almost miss it. “I can’t stay here, not with her gone.”
The shock must be visible on my face because Meredith throws me a glance.
That’s when we realize that Richard, the man who manipulated a decade of Nantucket real estate and broke our family from the inside, is at the end of his rope. He’s not calculating anymore, not even angry. He’s just…defeated.
He moves to the living room, and we follow. The normally pristine couch is draped with a drop cloth, and the old rug is rolled up in the corner. More boxes—one open, spilling handkerchiefs and letters.
Meredith stands tall, all courtroom edge. “So, the boxes. You were planning to ship everything out?”
“No.” His voice catches on the syllable. “Most of it is yours. Or should be. I realized I don’t have a right to any of it.” He stares up at her from the couch he plopped onto. There’s heartache and pain in his stare.
For a full second, nobody breathes.
I stare at the boxes, at the stacks of memory, and my hands go numb.
Meredith cocks her head, like she’s just been asked to believe in ghosts. She sees it, too, and the bite that was in her tone earlier disappears. “You could’ve called us.” This sounds more like pity.
Richard’s reply is a gentle shake of his head. “I couldn’t face it, not until I had to.”
I want to press him. I want to ask what turned him inside out—but part of me already knows. The house is Mom’s, in every fiber of its bones. With her gone, even Richard can’t pretend otherwise.
He stands and gestures toward the kitchen, and we move as a group. Even Meredith hesitates at the threshold, as if she’s worried the linoleum might collapse under all the secrets spilled here.
The kitchen is the heart of the house, or it was.
Now, half the cabinet doors hang open, their contents gutted.
Another box sits on the island, this one carefully lined with dish towels, each of Mom’s weirdly precious teacups nested inside.
These are the ones she never used—too special, too delicate. Now, waiting to be carted away.
Richard stands by the sink, eyes on the window above it—out there is the same view Mom stared at every morning. “I’m not taking anything that belonged to her,” he says, jaw quivering. “I just needed to stop seeing it. Every room. Every view from every window…she’s everywhere here.”
For a moment, I actually feel sorry for him.
Meredith softens, folding her arms as she takes in what’s left of our childhood home. “So, what’s the plan for the house? Are you selling, or is something else going on?”
He blinks, and for a moment, he actually looks up—straight at her, straight at me. No shadings, no games. “It’s up to you. Sell it, keep it, burn it down… I don’t care.” He pauses. The next words cut the deepest yet. “I’ve taken enough from you both. I won’t take any more.”
I feel the ground shift—not just under me, but under my entire sense of how this was supposed to play out. Meredith lowers her arms, eyes wide, caught mid-breath. She doesn’t trust it.
Neither do I.
But part of me wants to believe him.
I stare at the boxes, at the swirl of loss and possibility, and I realize this isn’t a battle anymore. It’s the aftermath. Whatever fight we had, it ended before we even got out of the car.
For once, Meredith doesn’t have an argument ready, and neither do I.
The silence in the kitchen is raw. There’s a wariness in the way Meredith’s knuckles flex, as if she’s still bracing for a trap. But all Richard does is stand there, hollowed out, letting us take in the ruins.
The garden. The boxes. The man we thought would never loosen his grip, finally unspooling.
I glance at Meredith, searching for some sign of what comes next.
She beats me to it. “If you’re serious—if you’re really done—then the next steps are ours to handle. Not yours.”
Richard nods, even a little grateful, like maybe surrender is the only thing left.
The three of us just stand there, marinating in the new order.