a favorite scapegoat in Callinas. Complaining about them was the fastest way to establish yourself as a local. The resentment had deep roots. Callinas had been just a few small farms until the ’70s, when an oil spill prompted an influx of environmental activists who wanted to help with the clean-up effort. After the spill was as gone as it would ever be, the activists traded in their tents for houses and an “intentional community.” When San Francisco started sprawling farther north, the residents knotted together under a banner of esoteric bylaws about water systems and zoning patterns, trying to keep outsiders away through infinite red tape. Kate had done her fair share of moaning about tourists in New York, but the Callinas residents were on a whole new level. Many people still refused to put up house numbers or street signs, and some people had started icing out anyone who had the audacity to list their house on Airbnb. Frank and Louise spoke in disgusted tones about the San Franciscans who came up to use the beach and left behind plastic toys, dog shit, cigarettes, sandwich wrappers, soggy books, and invasive species. To hear Louise tell it, it was only thanks to the hard work of devoted volunteers that Callinas hadn’t been embalmed in beachgoers’ refuse, like Pompeii beneath a layer of frozen ash.
“Tourists!” Louise cried again now, banging one hand against the steering wheel in frustration as the car ahead of them slowed to get around a sharp turn.
“I don’t think those people are tourists,” Kate said. “They have a Berkeley decal.”
“Day-trippers. Same thing.”
“Didn’t you used to come up here for the day? Before you moved here?”
“That was different,” Louise said.
“Why?”
“Because we truly appreciated it. We weren’t disrespectful like these people.”
Kate suppressed a smile. She had discovered a certain satisfaction in goading her aunt into contradicting herself. There was an art to it: Kate had to play a little dumb, so that she didn’t seem to be challenging Louise, but she also couldn’t sound too dumb or Louise would realize she was mocking her, which would ruin the game. And would be mean.
“Did you call ahead about your prescriptions?” Louise asked, for the dozenth time.
Kate’s smile faded. “The doctor called it in.”
“Sometimes they don’t fill it unless you’re there. Then you have to stand in line with all these strangers sneezing all over you. It’s very unhygienic.”
“So I’ll use hand sanitizer.”
“No!” Louise said, horrified. “Antibacterials create superbugs.”
Kate sighed and leaned her head against the window. She had wanted to borrow the car and run to the Mill Valley pharmacy herself, but Louise had insisted on coming along so that she could return a gallon of milk to the grocery store, even though they had already drunk half of it. It had gone bad too fast, Louise said. Kate wanted to say that it was probably because Louise had left it out on the counter overnight. But she couldn’t. There were a lot of things you couldn’t say when you were staying in someone’s house for free.
These days, she lived her whole life in other people’s spaces, bouncing back and forth between Frank and Louise’s cottage and the Brand house. Weirdly, she almost preferred the Brand house, as lonely and creepy as it could be. At least there she had some privacy, some time alone. Some autonomy.
So far, she hadn’t found much else of interest. The file cabinet lock had thwarted her—no matter how many times she watched that instructional video, she couldn’t figure out how to pick the lock without leaving scratches—so she had moved on to the other rooms on the second floor. The children’s bathroom was smeared with glittery blue toothpaste and strewn with sodden towels that Kate desperately wanted to pick up and hang on the towel rack. The kids’ bedroom was also a disaster, with tiny clothing heaped in tiny piles, a reusable grocery tote overflowing with chapter books, and Legos covering Oscar’s bed. He was sleeping on the twin mattress that was missing from Theo’s office, while Jemima got the full bed that must have come with the room. There was a pineapple-shaped nightlight plugged into one wall outlet, and above it, Jemima had cut a photo of Theo and a dark-haired woman—presumably their mother—into a heart and taped it on the wall.
Kate had studied the photo for longer than she meant to. Rachel Tatum was one of those women who looked like they could run a marathon without breaking a sweat. Her