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mother about it several times. But faced with her mother’s blank stare, the words Miranda might have said became marbles in her mouth. Finally she did the only thing she knew how to do when confronted by a problem she didn’t understand. The only thing that had ever resulted in a solution that worked. She called Dix.
    “I have to go back home, Dix,” she said. “I mean, back to Connecticut. I have to check up on things. Talk to my dad’s lawyer. Take care of . . . of . . . of stuff.”
    “Yes,” he said. “I imagine a lot of that has piled up down there by now.”
    His voice, his steadiness, was such a comfort to her. Something she felt she could actually lean into.
    “I don’t know how long it will all take. I’m worried about . . .”
    He broke in, relieving her of the need to finish. “I understand,” he said. “I’ll come by the house every few days. I’ll check up on your mom.”
    “Oh, Dix,” she breathed, relief that he had answered the question she didn’t even know how to ask flooding her voice. “Thank you so much.”
    Miranda started crying then. She didn’t know how to end the tears or the conversation, but Dix didn’t seem to mind. He just stayed on the phone with her. She listened to his strong, steady breaths in her ear and slowed her own breathing until it matched his. Only then did she feel ready to face what was ahead.

    Miranda had referred to the extensively restored and renovated Colonial home set on three acres of manicured grounds as “home” for all of her life. Yet, when she pulled into the curved driveway lined with mature maple trees and stopped in front of the white clapboard edifice on a hot summer afternoon, it felt like she was visiting someplace she hardly knew. As if she were once again being dragged along to another cocktail party with her parents. She sat in her car and counted the months since she’d been there. It had been more than a year. Her twenty-third birthday had come and gone in that time, unnoticed, unmarked by herself or her mother. As she gazed out her windshield at the imposing structure in front of her, she realized that she’d expected it to look haunted and decayed, with broken windows and pieces of siding hanging off. Like she felt. But it looked only a little empty, a bit tired. Also like she felt. The housekeeper and groundskeeper had done their jobs. She wondered if, like her, they’d half expected her father to magically return, roaring orders. Or at least for her mother to appear, issuing directions.
    Miranda got out of the car. The door clicked into the silence of the neighborhood. She unlocked the house, smelled potpourri and cleaning fluids. But even those false, sweet scents couldn’t completely cover the musty note of disuse. The housekeeper was thorough. The house was immaculate. All the food had been discarded other than spices and canned goods. The beds made taut. The bathrooms tidy and impersonal. No dust anywhere. The curtains hung stiffly. It felt like a hotel.
    Miranda wandered through the still house and into her bedroom. One stuffed animal, a bear her father had given her, sat propped up against the pillows on her bed. Her bookshelf held a toy horse, a few yearbooks, a couple of photo albums, and some books typical of teenage girls—Sylvia Plath, Lady Chatterley’s Lover , Virginia Woolf, her first sociology textbook. A few out-of-date clothes hung in the closet. She hadn’t realized just how long she’d been away. Exeter Academy and then Vassar College. Summer programs and internships. The house in the mountains. Her childhood mementoes had been long packed away and stored in the attic. Most of her clothes were at the log home. She was not much of a collector. A few pieces of inexpensive jewelry were all she typically brought back from her travels. Everything she saw in her bedroom belonged to a much younger version of herself, a self she could barely remember.
    She walked down the hall to her brother’s room. It