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the previous October, almost apologetically. It had two small bedrooms, a kitchen with hard-worn linoleum, and one room that served as living room and dining room and looked out to the ocean over the top of a quarter-mile stand of dense bittersweet. Peterson the cat appeared on the deck, responding to the sound of Rocky’s crunching footsteps on the driveway. The calico had a daytime life amid the bittersweet that had a lot to do with rodent annihilation. Cooper greeted Rocky’s entrance with his full-throttle, body-twisting euphoria, as if he was amazed at her return. She fed both animals and made sure that Peterson was inside for the night.
    â€œCooper, I need your stamp of approval on the new house. We’re sleeping over.” The dog lifted his head from his post-dinner grooming and cocked one eyebrow.
    This was one reason why she should go back to the university: she was seeking validation from a black Lab. But she wanted to see what it felt like in the new house with Cooper by her side, and she was a bit spooked about spending the first night alone in the house. She was considerably braver with a ninety-pound dog on her side of the equation.
    They stood in front of her new front door, and she said to the house, “Show me your worst and loudest. Let’s get everything out on the table.” It had been forty-eight hours since Natalie called.
    Rocky unlocked the side door to the kitchen and began her private inspection. The sink had gone yellow with singular determination. Piles of mouse droppings dotted the kitchen drawers. Cooper’s black claws clicking on the linoleum announced his movement around the kitchen. He lowered his head and sniffed, following ancient scents of children, family pets, and the final months of illness and death.
    No one had lived in the house for three years except right after Mr. Costello’s death, when his horrified cousins had spent just a week emptying the house of personal possessions. Catastrophes of such proportions formed a solid, epic fable for the islanders. Speculations about what makes a man take his own life flew around the Island Café for months, according to Isaiah. Did he do it out of love? Madness? Profound depression? Every man gripping his coffee cup wondered aloud if he would do the same thing. The Costellos had been married for forty-seven years. Had there been no kind friend, brother, or bighearted niece to hold tight to Mr. Costello until the worst of his grief began to ease? Rocky had tasted the desire to end her life in her addled thinking during the months after Bob’s death. What was it that pulled her so securely to a safe harbor? Finding the big black dog for one thing.
    Three years is a deadly time of loneliness for a house. Just like cats, houses shouldn’t be left untended for longer than three days; three years is devastating. A house has its own mental health requirements, the primary requirement being occupancy. Carbon dioxide must be exhaled into the drywall, skin detritus needs to flutter about the crevices like snow, and houses even welcome bits of flicked earwax in reserved spots along the far corners. Left alone too long, a house forgets how to breathe and grows anxious as the water sits too long in the toilets tanks. An old woman had been gripped by disease here and died in the arms of her husband. And he had been unable to conceive of life without her. Love had exhaled and never inhaled again here. Nearly all of the consciousness that remained in the floorboards, cupboards, and windowsills was gone when Rocky arrived and said, “I’ll buy it.”
    She wanted to resuscitate the house. She opened the kitchen windows. A breeze brought in the thick scent of wisteria from the adjacent property.
    Rocky and Cooper spent the first night with only a leaky air mattress that she dragged in and inflated with her bike pump. The living room, with its gaping fireplace, seemed the most central location to camp and get to