I finished my shift as the sun came up, and instead of driving home to sleep, I drove straight to the lake house. The key my mother had somehow copied would not matter after today. I had already called a locksmith the week before, uneasy about a feeling I could not name, and now that feeling had a face and a group chat. By nine that morning, every lock on the property had been replaced, and the spare my mother had stolen turned uselessly in a door that no longer knew it.

But changing the locks was only the beginning. I walked through the house and found the evidence I had suspected, wet towels in the closets, wine rings on my table, a bedroom rearranged to someone else’s taste. Then I sat down at my own kitchen counter, opened my laptop, and pulled up something that would end their weekend before it began.