She had started looking in winter, browsing rental sites recommended by friends who went away for long periods of summer and knew about this stuff. They knew which towns along the Cape had the cleanest beaches, which towns on Nantucket were the most kid friendly, and which ice cream stands the Obamas frequented on the Vineyard. These tips she wrote down on a notepad. Martha’s Vineyard = Obamas = ice cream. She’d marked ­kid-friendly places as ones to avoid. She and her husband of five years had discussed visiting the Cape before, but for five years had not. It was decided that this was the summer to do so. They would leave Manhattan and spend a month within walking distance of the Atlantic Ocean, in a classic New England cottage with gables, shutters, and two beds. Two beds so that both sets of parents could visit, staggered.

In the lead-up weeks, Nate spoke of staying realistic. The year prior there’d been a pandemic. They’d forgone seeing parents or leaving the house much. He preferred the bubble but knew that bubbles had to be left. Soon, they were in a rental car, driving north. The trunk was full of food, clothes, cleaning supplies, and their gigantic four-year-old sheepdog, Mantou, sat upright in the back seat. While the idealistic vision of a trip with their parents had come from Keru, raising a ­full-​­size sheepdog in the city had been Nate’s idea. A sheepdog fulfilled a boyhood dream. The pastoral one, of endless fields and a friend about your height whose fur your small hands could sink into and who could guide you into the magical woods. Nate had grown up in a small, ­one-​­story house with brown carpets. His mother had allowed two rats, many fish, a snake, but no dogs. “Those purebreds are expensive and bougie,” she’d said. “Why waste money on them, when there are so many strays in need?”—​­none his mother ever took in.