She rented the house for six weeks. It was small, just one bedroom and a screen porch, with ceiling fans that wobbled when they turned. There was a beach a few minutes’ walk away, but she rarely went. She preferred the quiet of the mornings — the hum of insects, the slow warming of the air, the way the early light filtered softly through the house’s porch screens, pale and golden, casting a mesh of shadow across the floor...