Chapter 1.
If it blew down in a hurricane. Or if it were struck by lightning and burned to the ground. If the house, home to the Michaels clan for three generations, were destroyed—what a relief. But no such luck. It would have to be a willed event on Emma’s part . . . and would her family survive the loss? The house had always been a safe haven, a familiar setting that, in her mind, evoked love and nurturance, even if the reality left her empty. What if by giving it up—not through a natural disaster but a real estate transaction—she was giving up what the house symbolized: her family and her past?
            Did she even care?
            Emma wondered this as she walked into the Poquatuck Village assisted living facility and headed for her grandmother’s apartment.
            “She’s gone!” the attending nurse announced to Emma.
            Of course. She had disappeared. Again. Her beeper bracelet lay on the bed, but Gussie herself was gone. While the Harbor View staff searched the premises, Emma surveyed her grandmother’s room—touched the crushed pillow on the bed, the rumpled sheets. Where might she have gone? The old graveyard, as she had the last time she had “gone for a walk”? Impossible. Two years ago, Gussie was still driving, whereas now . . . Gussie’s wheeled walker didn’t do well in April mud.
            A whiff of her grandmother rose up, stark in the back of Emma’s nose. Camay soap, Jean Nate body powder, molasses. Gingersnaps. Emma and her grandmother used to bake gingersnaps together, rolling the soft, spiced dough into balls with their bare hands, then through a drift of white sugar. She could almost feel her grandmother standing next to her. Could almost hear her saying, You wouldn’t dare. And her grandmother would be right. Emma’s determination to sell the family property dissolved into concern for Gussie, whose absence left room for breathless imaginations of what life would be without her. Even Gussie’s Queen Anne desk suggested dearth. No bills to be paid. No robin’s egg blue stationary. No chair to sit in and stare out the bedroom window at the view. At which thought Emma turned to leave. She knew exactly where her grandmother had gone.
            Emma hurried out of The Harbor View and ran to the town docks. Maneuvering the sidewalk, with its sheen of black ice, she worried that her grandmother might have slipped and fallen. She picked up speed down Gold Street, heading to the harbor and the fishing pier. Then a moment of relief, because there sat her grandmother, profiled against the horizon, her posture straight, her chin up. She was staring across the gently ruffled water of Poquatuck harbor to the peninsula, and the family property, across the way. Emma cursed and resumed her race across the playground to the gazebo. She had somehow to protect her grandmother, who would be upset looking at the house. It was so different.
            Stepping up into the gazebo, Emma paused to catch her breath through the knot in her throat. She reassured herself. Her grandmother was alive. She was fine. On the surface, anyway. Though upon closer inspection, and with foreboding, Emma saw a chilling likeness. Nostrils flared. Eyes wide and glassy. Her grandmother looked exactly as Emma’s father had years before. Emma had not known then that she was seeing the resemblance backwards: that her father was looking like his mother. Instead, it had taken until now for Emma to see what they shared: fear. Of loss. Of mortality. Of what would their legacy be.
            In so short a time, so many changes. For the first time in years, Emma had known exactly what she wanted: freedom from her family’s expectations. Minutes before, at The Harbor View, she had intended to reject all that her grandmother had given her and to ask for her imprimatur on that decision. She had come for her grandmother’s support. Now, instead, Emma would have to help her grandmother. As Gussie shifted her attention to her granddaughter, Emma wondered if she had the strength.
            “You’re back,” Gussie said, her voice quavering. “I’m glad. I’ve been wanting to talk.”
            “Me too, Gram.” Emma sat on the edge of the bench, as close as she dared. The fishermen shouted to each other as they stacked lobster pots and coiled thick ropes into neat piles on the dock. Terns screamed and dove. A solitary sailboat’s halyard clanged against its mast.
            “That clanking noise never happened in the old days,” Gussie said. “Boats had wooden masts then. We owned a lapstrake-planked rowboat that Winston bought early on in our marriage. He used to row me into the village with the children. I can still hear the plunk of the oars into the water as Winston pulled us to shore. He was proud of his strength. I suppose I was, too.”
            Emma considered her grandmother, the matriarch of the Michaels family. Faded, hazel eyes; tousled, short grey hair; skin soft as a calf’s on a feather-stuffed pillow. At eighty-nine, Gussie exuded beauty and formality. It was easy to imagine her as the young woman who had overseen the work in her garden, involved herself in church duties, and raised her children—and eventually her grandchildren, too. All those ages, child to adult, were layered and shifting like sand on a beach exposing seashells and sea glass, secrets of the depths. Were there secrets? Gussie looked at Emma sideways.
            “You wouldn’t happen to have any gingersnaps in that satchel, would you?” she asked.
            “I didn’t know I was coming to see you,” Emma said.
            “You didn’t?” Gussie flushed with offense. Emma sat up, reminded of her strict, not her weak, grandmother. “How did you end up here, then? Just happening by, after absenting yourself for months and months?” Gussie paused to look about them, her spine stiff. “Certainly, I wasn’t expecting you. In fact, I assumed I would never see you again. I’m not young anymore, you know. I could die any day.”
            “Especially if you catch pneumonia walking around in the cold without a coat,” Emma replied and stood up.
            “You’re already leaving?” Gussie asked, and again that tremulous voice, the vulnerability.
            “No, Gram,” Emma replied,...