I looked at the driveway. I looked at the truck. I looked at my sister setting a box down on my porch and wiping her hands on her jeans.
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “God, you’re so uptight. You barely use this place. We’ll make it a real home.”
That phrase, a real home, landed strangely. My cabin had been a real home since the day I moved in. I had chosen the site myself, spent two years saving the down payment, managed the mortgage alone for three years, and driven that mountain road in every season and every weather until I knew every curve of it. I had hung my grandmother’s quilt on the spare room wall and planted lavender along the front path and built a life in those rooms that was quiet and specific and entirely mine.
“I didn’t invite you here,” I said.
