They left two days later. Lisette had wanted to go with them, but Eby said no. Eby told her to make amends with her own family before something like this happened to her. They left Lisette crying silently, the force of her emotion nearly rattling the lampshades and shaking loose icicles on the eaves outside. Eby ran back to her and hugged her one last time. “We are conduits for happiness,” she whispered to her. “Remember that.”

The trip back was uncomfortable and jarring, like that moment you wake from a dream and have no idea where you are, what is real. The air in Atlanta was humid and warm when their plane landed. As the taxi drove them away and sweat began to stain her pink silk dress, Eby kept turning around as if winter was just behind them, still in view, as if she could still see swirls of Amsterdam snow.

They didn’t stop by their house first. George had bought the place, a neoclassical mansion that had once belonged to a mayor of Atlanta generations ago, in the months before they married, but they had never actually lived there. They’d slept there on their wedding night, on a bundle of blankets in the dining room in the cavernously empty home, laughing just to hear the echo and jokingly calling out to any ghosts. They’d left for Europe the next day. They’d sent home enough furniture from their honeymoon to fill the place, and Eby had imagined, when they eventually returned, that her days would be spent going through crates and remembering their trip fondly. She would carefully decide what would go where, which memory she wanted in the study, in the hallway, in their bedroom. It was what was going to make being home bearable.

What had actually happened was that her sister, Marilee, had used the key Eby had given her in case there was an emergency (Marilee’s suggestion) to make the house her own in the eight months George and Eby had been away. Soon after they’d left on their honeymoon, Marilee’s husband Talbert had been unable to pay their rent, and they’d been kicked out of their apartment. Marilee had then decided that it would be okay to move into George and Eby’s home. It had just been temporary at first, but the longer George and Eby had stayed away, the more comfortable Marilee had become.

Thinking back to the letters Eby had received in Europe, she’d thought it odd how many of her friends had told her how beautiful the house was. Eby had assumed they’d meant from the outside. But they’d all actually been inside. Marilee had been throwing parties there nearly every month. And she had unpacked all the crates of furniture that had been delivered and had decorated the house herself.

One of the last things George had shipped home was an extremely heavy Louis XV marble-top dresser. When it had arrived, Marilee had loved it and had wanted it in the bedroom she and Talbert were sharing. The two of them had tried to push it up the grand staircase by themselves, but Talbert had lost his grip, then his footing, and he’d fallen back down the stairs, the marble-top dresser landing on top of him. It had killed him before Marilee could get the neighbors over to help her. He had died in front of three-year-old Quinn.

Eby had learned this when she’d finally been able to reach Marilee on the phone when they’d arrived in London the day before. The first thing out of Eby’s mouth had been, “Why did you leave Quinn there alone with him?” She’d been aghast that the poor child had been subjected to such a thing.

It had been the wrong thing to say.

“She’ll forget! What about me? I just lost my husband! I was there! I saw it happen!”

Eby had heard Quinn crying in the background. They were staying with Eby and Marilee’s mother, in the tiny turquoise house for which George had paid off the mortgage before they’d gotten married. His first wedding gift to her.

“Fix this,” Marilee had said. “You have everything. If you had just given me some money before you’d left like you did with Mama, none of this would have happened! If you had just come home when you were supposed to! And why did you have to send that stupid, awful dresser?”

The taxi Eby and George rode in from the airport came to a stop in front of Eby’s mother’s house.

“Why don’t you want me to come in?” George asked, taking Eby’s hands in his own.

“That will only make it worse.” Showing up with her own husband after Marilee had lost hers would only fuel Marilee’s madness. All her life, Eby had been tiptoeing around her family, her calm nature antagonizing their volatile personalities. She wanted to make them happy. She wanted to steady them. And now, so full of the confidence she’d gained on her honeymoon, she wanted to change them. She could make them better. She was sure that she could.

“Whatever they need, I’ll do for them,” George said.

“I know you will. Thank you.”

George took a deep breath as if smelling the air for the first time, how foreign it was now. “I can’t believe we’re home.”

“Me either,” Eby said, squeezing his large hands and stepping out of the cab before she changed her mind. “I’ll call you when I need you to pick me up.”

She stepped onto the front porch and waited for the taxi to pull away. This was the first time in almost a year that there was measurable distance between them, and the farther he was away from her, the stronger she felt the tension, like a rubber band pulling tautly, ready to snap. She wanted to run after the taxi. She wanted to dive into his arms and make this all disappear. Instead, she turned and, through the window, saw her mother, Marilee, and Quinn sitting stoically in front of the television, three stunned figures. She took a deep breath, knocked on the door, then entered.

The moment she did, the hysterics started again.

Eby looked good, and Marilee hated her for it. And whenever little Quinn got too near Eby, cautiously happy to see her, Marilee would pull her away and tell her that her father would be alive if it weren’t for Aunt Eby. It took three days of sleeping on the couch, wearing the same clothes, for Eby to finally look sufficiently bad enough for Marilee.

In the days they spent apart, George arranged for a tombstone for Talbert. He had already been buried, but there had been no memorial service, so George organized one for him. George also met with a realtor to find Marilee a home. Lastly, he destroyed the dresser, burning it outside and burying the marble top under the magnolia tree in their backyard.

The night of the memorial service, George was shocked to see Eby so bedraggled. Marilee had insisted Eby wear a black dress, an ill-fitting one that belonged to their mother. Marilee had wanted to shine, to be the beautiful widow. And she hadn’t wanted anyone to ask Eby about her honeymoon. The moment anyone approached Eby in the chapel, happy to see her back, Marilee would wail and call attention to herself. Once, she even pretended to faint.

George took Eby home after the service, despite Marilee’s protests. Eby had been too tired to argue with him. She would make it up to Marilee the next day.

He’d left every light in the home on for her so it would look cheery. But when they walked in, they both knew.

“We can’t live here. We’re going to have to sell this place,” Eby said as George closed the door.

“I know.”

“I suppose it’s for the best.” Eby sighed. “It doesn’t feel like home.”

“We’ll find it, Eby. I promise. Look at this.” He reached over and took a postcard from a stack of mail piled in a large basket by the door. “A friend told me about some investment property down south—a lake and some cabins. I’m going to take you there for the weekend, just to get away for a while.”

There was a photo on the postcard of people enjoying a summer day at a swampy lake—a woman with a white parasol, a boy in overalls, a girl in a pink swimsuit. The words Welcome to LOST LAKE Georgia were written on it. It was an old photo, but Eby had the strangest feeling looking at it. Like she was seeing her future, which was silly. She couldn’t go there. She didn’t have the strength to leave, knowing she had to come back. “Lisette would like this,” she said sadly. “Someplace warm.”

He kissed her neck gently, as if she would break. No one had ever thought Eby was delicate before. Only George. “You need a drink.”

He disappeared around the corner into the dining room. Eby stood in the open foyer and looked around. The house was immaculate but decorated all wrong. It wasn’t at all how Eby had imagined it. This was how Marilee wanted it. That damn dresser wasn’t even supposed to go upstairs. Eby had intended for it to go here in the foyer, with a nice mirror above it. She had imagined the sound of her keys as she tossed them there every time she walked inside, a pleasant clink against the marble.

She staggered to the staircase and sat down. She put her head in her lap, exhausted. She had woken up several times the past few nights, wondering where she was. Paris? Amsterdam? And where was George? In those few frightening moments before she remembered, she thought she might have an inkling of what her sister might be going through, and it made dealing with Marilee in her present state of mind a little easier.

Sitting there, nodding off, Eby wondered if there was a form of mental illness that wasn’t biological but learned. Eby could remember her own mother on a downward spiral after her husband died. And even now, their mother was feeding Marilee’s beautiful grief with outrage of her own that Eby had stayed away so long. They were wounded. They were victims. If only they had everything they’d ever wanted, then they’d be okay. But because they didn’t, it was everyone else’s fault.