I bought my parents a $650,000 cottage by the ocean for their 40th anniversary so they could finally rest. A few months later, my mother called me sobbing because my sister’s husband had changed the locks, put the house up for short-term rent, and told my father, “Get out. This isn’t your home.”

My father, Franklin Pritchard, stood paralyzed in the doorway of the weathered cedar house I had purchased for my parents’ fortieth anniversary while his fingers remained clamped onto the brass handle as if the metal could explain the sudden hostility.

In his other hand, he clutched a simple paper grocery bag where the crust of a baguette poked out of the top alongside a bundle of fresh parsley with stems that had been crushed by his tight grip.

Behind him, the rugged coastline of Rockport was being itself, which meant the cold Atlantic was churning up gray swells and tossing white spray against the boulders with a rhythmic indifference that ignored the human tragedy unfolding on the porch.

It was supposed to be a perfectly ordinary morning of the kind my mother had spent decades imagining during her long shifts at the accounting firm.

She had envisioned sipping dark coffee on the wrap around porch and feeling the salt air soften the curtains while my father pretended to solve a crossword puzzle but really spent his time studying the horizon.