“Young families want to be in place before school starts in September.” But the sisters knew it wouldn’t be a young couple with noisy children moving into the house. It would be a developer buying up the place and tearing it down to build a Twenty-first Century Rich Guy Compound. Maggie and Tricia tried not to talk about it and Liza couldn’t even think about it.

Tricia had moved most of her things, including her laptop with dual monitors, into the boathouse so she could work in private. There were details about the estate that she wanted to deal with on her own before informing her sisters. The boathouse offered her the space she needed, both physically and emotionally. Without the clutter of her father’s books and ephemera, the main floor was bright and open, bigger than her Manhattan apartment. I’d paint it a pale blue if I stayed here, Tricia thought.

There was a knock, immediately followed by Maggie bursting through the door. “You’ll never guess what I found in the attic. In that old chest where I found Mom’s skirt. I hadn’t gone through all the drawers, but look!

Mom’s notebooks! Six of them. Filled with poems!” She held up notebooks triumphantly. “Tim and I started emptying the attic and there was the chest with a few classic Laura Ashley sundresses and her glorious poetry!”

“Let me see those.” Tricia grabbed the aged black-and-white composition books out of Maggie’s hands. She had to feel it, hold her mother’s work in her hands. “I can’t, I can’t . . .” All the composure that Tricia had willed since the day she’d taken the call from Liza in the stairwell dissolved. She handed the notebooks back to Maggie and started sobbing.

“Trishie?” Maggie had never seen her sister like this. She had no idea what to do. “What’s going on? Do you need water? Deep breathing?”

Tricia held up a finger. She needed a minute to collect herself. “In the last chapter of the memoir . . .” Another deep breath. “. . . Dad admits that he was jealous of Mom’s talent, her gift. And resentful that she could write with such ease, without needing alcohol or angst. That she could sit down and write for hours on end and create little jewels, that’s what he called her poems. ‘Little jewels.’ She gave him a folder of her favorite poems right before she died, asking him to get them published. But in Snap, he admits to getting really drunk and really angry. So angry, in fact, that he burned the poems instead.”

“What a fucking child. He lit her poetry on fire instead of using his influence to publish it after her death?”

“He claims that’s what triggered the depression. The guilt, not the grief. I can’t believe you found Mom’s poems, Maggie. She must have stashed her original notebooks in that chest and given Dad copies.”

“We’re all going to need a lot of therapy to unpack that. Group sessions.”

“I know. This revelation has been doing a number on me since I read it. I was terrified to tell you both.”

“It would have pushed Liza right over the edge,” Maggie agreed. “I always thought Mom had stopped writing, but she hadn’t. She kept writing and we never gave her credit.”

Tricia shook her head. “Why would he do it? Did he think burning the poems made him look like some kind of literary badass?”

Maggie knew. It was the same sort of professional jealousy that had engulfed her in the past. She’d bad-mouthed other artists, acted blasé when she’d really been blown away by someone else’s work. Once in college, she hid the piece of another student, not destroying it, but making sure it wasn’t on the wall next to hers in a show. It was found weeks later in a closet in the English department. She could understand wanting to burn the competition, to literally light another’s work on fire. Maggie did her best work on that edge and she guessed her father did, too. But she didn’t say any of that to

her sister, who had played by the rules for her entire life. “You know Dad, he liked the grand gesture. For all we know, he thought it would make a great short story one day. Or he was just really hammered. After Mom died, that was a bad period. For all of us.”

“This is a miracle, Maggie! I feel like I can breathe again,” Tricia admitted while paging through one of the notebooks. “But I still think we’re going to need the group therapy.”

“I don’t think you should tell Liza. You know how she worships him despite everything.”

“I know. I’m deleting that section from the memoir before turning it over to Allegory. I don’t care if it compromises the integrity of the work. What he did, it’s fucked up. And Liza can never know.”

“Make sure Serena knows that Liza can never know.”

“I will,” Tricia said, thinking about how Serena would appreciate the need for discretion. And maybe a tiny bit honored to be taken into the Sweeney circle of confidence. “Cap will be so relieved. He felt worse than I did, I think. And I felt awful.”

“He always had a thing for Mom. In his way,” Maggie said, picking up one of the notebooks. “Can I keep these? I’ll make copies for everyone. But I feel like I owe something to Mom, to make up for not understanding her.

There may be something in these poems I can use. Plus, I found them.”

Maggie resorting to the “finders keepers” legal argument made Tricia smile. “How about we not turn these over to Copies R Us like Snap? When Raj returns, he can scan them properly for posterity. You can have them after, okay? These are special.”

Tricia rubbed her hands gently over the cover of one of the notebooks. It triggered a memory of her mother during the last year of her life, sitting in bed, writing in these familiar black-and-white notebooks, a rose-colored pashmina around her thin shoulders. Why hadn’t any of them recalled that detail about their mother? “Remember the day Dad died and I said that I wished we could all have one more conversation with him? Well, here’s the conversation we all deserved to have with him: ‘What the hell, Dad?’”

“Amen to that.”

“I need to sit a second and read some of this. Like Stop, Drop, and Read,” Maggie said, recalling the game they used to play as children with their mother on rainy days. In the middle of picking up the house or a fight between the sisters, Maeve would call out, “Stop, drop, and read.” The

sisters would scramble to find the nearest book or magazine and for the next ten minutes, the house would be quiet.

Moving toward the little galley kitchen that she had recently stocked, Tricia said, “A little tea with your poetry?”

“Oh, yes.”

Tricia opened the cabinet and took out two of the college mugs, Oberlin and Evergreen, and placed them on a tray she’d swiped from the main house. She dropped in apple cinnamon tea bags and poured over the hot water. While the tea steeped, she fixed a plate of gingersnaps. She carried the full tray over to the couch and set it down on the well-worn pine table.

I’d get all new furniture, too, she thought. Clean, classic. The two sisters took opposite sides of the couch, each opening a notebook to read the words their mother had written years ago, but now with a deeper sense of compassion, like maybe this was the way the story was meant to unfold after all.

Liza had literally spent the week in bed after her breakdown at the gallery.

She’d sent all who witnessed her collapse a dozen texts, explaining her exhaustion, thanking them for their support. The group texted back dozens of kissy face emojis in a show of solidarity. Individually, they reached out with more personal notes. Kat Ryan dropped by several times to talk and bring gazpacho from her garden tomatoes. Connor the architect returned to the city for the workweek, but David the shoe designer stayed in Southport and played the role of support staff, cooking, fetching tea, and watching Netflix while Liza physically recovered her strength. “Sweet Home Alabama is healing,” David insisted, as he fixed Liza a plate of scones and berries.

The pamphlet from the funeral home had mentioned that exhaustion was a side effect of grief, but Liza had no idea it would be this overwhelming, the kind of tired she experienced when she was pregnant with the twins.

Like can’t-keep-your-eyes-open tired. She was grateful that Emily and Jenny from the gallery could handle the follow-up to the opening like pros.

I’ll give them a bonus at the end of the summer, Liza thought.

The word about Liza and Whit had started to trickle out and the texts came pinging in. Her old Southport friends, the mothers from school and sports, even her hairdresser voiced support and offered help. Liza felt like she’d been in a blackout for the last six weeks since her father’s death and