There’s a dead house next door. Evan and I walk to the beach to feed the winter ducks, and we pass it on the way. It sits forgotten, friendless and mournful. The paint has faded and cracked to match the salt-soaked wood, and the remnants of a fanciful trim along the eaves are long past irrelevant. Every window is broken, and through the shards and gloom I can see wallpaper inside, pinstripes and rosebuds.

I stand in front of it, stepping closer, trespassing. Waiting for it to wake up and explain itself. People were born in there; people died in there. How can a house stand through a hundred and fifty years of hurricanes and nor’easters only to wither away, alone? It stares back at me and sighs. I don’t know, it says.

Houses like this are scattered throughout the south shore of Nova Scotia. And fishing boats, too: beached and left to rot, hollow and exposed. A study of peace in abandonment. There’s one just down the road, keeled over on a strip of sand. I hope no one ever takes it away.

Evan’s getting antsy. It’s time to go. Why are we stopped?  he wonders. It’s just a falling-down old house.