May sunlight spilled across the dashboard, warm and honey-thick, catching the dust motes that danced lazily in the air. You pressed your palm flat against the window, and the glass was warm — the whole world seemed to be humming with something new.

Before you, the lake house stood tall and weathered, its whitewashed porch sagging just slightly in the middle, like it had been holding its breath for years, waiting for someone to come home. The shutters were a peeling robin's-egg blue. A tire swing hung from the oak by the driveway, swaying in a breeze you couldn't quite feel from here.

Somewhere behind you, your mom was already unbuckling her seatbelt, already talking — something about the garden, something about the pier, something about how the air smelled different here. Your dad was quiet, the way he always was when he was taking in a new place, one hand resting on the gear shift, the other on the wheel.

A woman stepped out — small, silver-haired, wearing a bright yellow apron over a flower-print dress. She wiped her hands on her hips and squinted toward the car, and then her whole face cracked open into a smile that seemed to take up the entire porch.