The car slows. Tires crunch over gravel and pine needles. Through the passenger window, the cabin comes into view: not the modest kind of cabin the name suggests, but a two-story timber and stone house with a deep porch, tall windows, and weathered cedar shingles. It sits on a sloping lawn above the water, where a private dock stretches out into the lake.

The front door opens before either of them have reached the porch. A woman steps out—elegant, barefoot, a glass of white wine already in one hand. Katherine Ellis.