Tropesick

Too-Convenient Displacement

Willa returned home from the Inn one evening to find her parents’ house completely flooded. All ten thousand square feet of

it, and the guesthouse too. This, her mother had muttered, was the problem with historic properties—those cedar roofs, those

yearslong permitting processes. But it made no difference why or how the flood occurred. What mattered was this: Willa Pearson

didn’t know how to ask for help. She didn’t want to burden her parents with so much as a squeak. And, because of that, she

had no idea where she was supposed to go.