She is completely unprepared for the leaves, the thunder of color and the stillness of the road. She does not remember the trees being so tall. She does not remember the number of new summer homes that have hatched along each side of Thanksgiving Lane, their windows boarded up for winter. New dirt roads have been cut through stands of birch and juniper. When did this happen? When were all these houses built? From the top of the hill, she looks across the harbor to the dunes. The cottages cling like small white moths to the insides of the bowls. Even Skirdagh is different, although she cannot exactly place the change. Only Maggie’s small triangle of yard seems untouched: the root cellar and the chicken house, the coop swept with new corn thrown across the dirt. The woodpile, Eve notices, seems smaller, as if its top layers have been stripped. The stripping is even, but the logs that were taken have not been replaced. She is shocked by her father’s face—the puckered mouth—how his lips pour in around themselves.
