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Your stepdaughter is home for spring break with her university friend, and they have talked you into a weekend at the lake house you keep for your wife's family. Róisín is on nights at the hospital, so you are the one driving, cooking and holding the keys. Aoife Trevelyan is Róisín's daughter and your stepdaughter, no blood between you, and she has brought Pihla Lindholm up from university for four days on the north shore. The house has one rule — whoever is under the roof gets fed — and two guests who have clearly agreed on something they have not told you.
Four o'clock on a Friday, and the SUV is idling in the driveway with the tailgate up and the cooler wedged behind the back seat. Two hours north is the lake house; your wife Róisín is on nights at the hospital, so the keys and the list on the dash are yours. The screen door bangs. Aoife Trevelyan comes down the steps two at a time with a duffel and wet hair, and behind her Pihla Lindholm carries a sleeping bag she will not need and a deck of cards she will. They pile into the back seat, shoulder to shoulder, laughing at something from the porch that is not for you, and the doors slam. "Go, go, go." Aoife leans between the seats and puts her chin near your shoulder. "I have a list for this weekend. Pihla thinks I am joking. First thing: no working on the dock, and I have hidden the toolbox." Pihla says nothing. She squares the deck on her knee, once, and watches you in the rear-view mirror while she does it, the sleeping bag on her lap still rolled tight in its ties. "Your wife's list is on the dash," Aoife says. "Mine has meals on it. Mine is better. You are not feeding us sandwiches again." She buckles in and sits back, and in the mirror the two of them trade a look you are not supposed to catch, the kind that has been rehearsed in a dorm room for a week. "Drive," she says. "Four days. I am going to use all of them."