“Did I ever tell you that I kissed your grandpa for the first time at a dance there?” Eva asked as she stared at the old log clubhouse from her open car door. The Adirondack chairs on the front porch sat empty, and Eva remembered a time when it was hard to catch an open one. That emptiness felt appropriate, she thought; it reminded her of the hole she’d felt in her heart for the entire three-hour drive up to the family cabin that morning.

“It seems like I might’ve heard that one before, Grandma.” A smirk lifted the corner of Paige’s mouth when she arrived at her grandmother’s side to help her out of the car.

Eva took her hand and winced as she slid down from the seat. Her old bones were stiff from the long drive, but the rich, earthy smell of the forest made it worth it. On a cold February day, Eva yearned for that smell, because for all of her 83 years she’d associated it with the arrival of another summer at the cabin. She closed her eyes as she laced her fingers in Paige’s and listened to the sound of the nearby river.

Cora came around the front of the vehicle and leaned back against the hood. “It was a good spot for kissing,” she said with a wry smile.

“Mom!” Paige exclaimed.

Eva smiled and recalled that Cora had hesitated when she’d suggested that Paige come along with them. Paige is busy with her kids, she’d protested, but Eva knew this trip would be important for her granddaughter. Over the last several years, when it had grown more difficult for Eva to make the trip to the cabin, Paige had helped her pack, driven an hour out of her way to pick Eva up and get her home before a doctor’s appointment. As she thought about the connection her granddaughter knew existed between their family and this place, a tingling filled her nose. Eva feared if she began crying now, she wouldn’t stop all weekend, though, so she pulled away from her granddaughter and said, “Let’s get to the cabin.”

Paige reached out for her grandmother when she saw how difficult the uneven ground seemed to be for her, but Cora grabbed her daughter’s wrist and shook her head. An understanding passed between them, and Paige knew that Eva needed to do this alone. They followed her down the one-lane dirt road lined with clapboard cabins. When Eva had been a child, and even Cora, the arrival of one of the summer tenants would’ve been met with shouted greetings from neighbors and the tinkling sound of ice in a pitcher of lemonade or tea. Today, they saw a few tourists wandering around and heard only cicadas calling their greeting as they neared the Calhoun Cabin.

“That’s new,” Cora said and pointed to a fresh, green sign in front of the house. Eva hustled to it as best she could, and the women read the historical marker in silence:

“Purchased by Gerald and Nancy Calhoun in 1897, Cabin #5 is the longest,

privately-owned cabin in the Daisy community. Gerald Calhoun worked for

the Daisy Oven Company as a manager from 1892 to 1907. In 1948, when

the State of Michigan purchased the land from the company, it allowed

families who owned cabins to sell to the State or continue to pass it down

to any descendants living at the time. In March, 2025, Gerald and Nancy’s

granddaughter, Eva Porter, sold the cabin to the State of Michigan.”

Eva blinked back her tears. She remembered a conversation she’d had with a peppy ranger a few summers ago. The young woman had explained that they were turning the cabins into exhibits highlighting northern-Michigan vacation history. Slowly the signs and labels went up throughout the community and visitors could enter the state-owned cabins. Watching her own neighbors become exhibit material never sat right with Eva, and now she bristled seeing the same done to her family.

“At least I won’t have to see that again,” Eva muttered before she waved a dismissive hand at the sign and started up the porch steps.

Her fingers, bent from arthritis, gripped the rail as she planted both feet firmly on each step before climbing up to the next. Her memories of sprinting up the stairs as a child sat so fresh in her mind that she now felt trapped in a stranger’s body.

Cora chewed on her lip as she watched her mother. It wasn’t the physical pain that she was worried about, but the emotional pain she knew her mother was hiding as she stood in front of the door, unmoving. “Mom, we’re going to grab the boxes,” she finally said.

“That’ll be fine.” Eva continued to stare at the door handle.

“Does she need help with the key?” Paige whispered.

“No, let’s go,” Cora said and nudged her along.

Eva listened to the footsteps on the gravel before she raised a shaky hand to unlock door. The wood, swollen with humidity, creaked as Eva shoved the door open. The familiar, musty smell greeted her, just as it had every summer, but Eva hesitated to step inside. This would be the last time she’d open the cabin, the last time she would smell the old wood, and the last time she would allow the place to stir up a lifetime of memories. This weekend her daughter and granddaughter would help her pack up the few belongings the family always left behind, and she would say one final goodbye.

Eva stepped inside and gave her eyes a moment to adjust to the dark. The living room came into focus through her tears—the wood-paneled walls, old leather sofa and loveseat arranged around the field-stone fireplace, and the heavy, wooden mantle covered in her father’s carved ducks. She walked over to it and let her fingers dance over the heads of wood ducks, mergansers, and mallards. Then she came to the portrait of her grandparents, which she’d insisted remain in the middle. Eva picked it up and, as she wiped the dust from their faces, her heart swelled with gratitude.

“Benji always liked to play with those ducks.” Paige referred to her own son, another generation of the family with memories of this place, as she walked into the cabin with a stack of flattened moving boxes.

Eva smiled before she held the portrait to her chest and said, “I bet they never imagined six generations of us would come to love this place.”

Cora, who had followed with the cooler, left it against the wall and walked over to her mother. “It’s been a wonderful gift for all of us.”

The three women stood in silence for a moment, looking around the room. Eva could almost hear the cascade of giggles from a sea of sleeping bags spread across the living room floor. She and all her siblings and cousins would push the furniture against the walls and claim the room as their own. Cora recalled the shuffling of cards as her parents and the neighbors would play Euchre late into the night. Paige remembered the slap of wet feet on the wooden floor as she

and her siblings, then her own children, ran inside after swimming in the river.

“Mom,” Cora tore herself back to the present. “There was a ranger outside, and he…”

“Not interested,” Eva interrupted. She had a way of being firm, without raising her voice, that both Cora and Paige found more intimidating than any yelling.

“But he just wants to talk to you and hear your story and ours,” she continued.

“We are not a museum exhibit,” she said, and pulled away from the younger women.

Paige looked to her mother and raised her eyebrow. Cora let out a deep breath and tried to let her frustration wash away. As they had moved through the process of selling the cabin and planning for this trip, Cora had several times reminded her mother that the cabin was special to everyone.

Eva placed the picture of her grandparents back on the mantle and walked down the hallway to the first bedroom. She stepped inside, opened the window and looked around. This room had always belonged to the eldest adults staying at the cabin. She placed her hand on the old blue and white afghan that was folded neatly at the end of the bed. She had crocheted it in her early twenties, and it had remained in this room.

The others hovered as she repeated this process in each bedroom and then the bathroom. Sometimes in the summer ten swimming suits could be found hanging in that room, dripping into the tub, sink, or onto the old, green linoleum floor. When Eva closed her eyes, she could almost hear the rhythmic plinking of the water.

“Paige, why don’t you get the food and put it in the fridge,” Cora said as she watched her mother step out of the bathroom and turn toward the kitchen.

Eva stepped through the threshold to the kitchen and paused to glance at the writing on the door frame. There, the heights of more than two dozen family members, and a few dogs, had been recorded—a family history in pencil, marker, and crayon. Eva found the oldest line; it was one she’d made one evening in 1950, when she measured her father while standing on a kitchen chair. She’d written “John C.” above the line and that was the form every name took after that. Near the bottom Eva saw “Benji D., 2017” above a line marking her great grandson’s height.

This time tears came without warning. Eva let out a clipped sob and covered her mouth with her hand. Cora reached out for her mother’s elbow and guided her to a chair at the kitchen table. Paige had just wheeled the cooler into the kitchen, so she left it, filled a glass with water, and placed it on the table in front of her grandmother.

After a few moments, Eva croaked, “Where is the ranger?”

Cora looked at her mother and saw the tracks the tears had followed down her cheeks. “Mom, it’s not his fault that this is happening.”

“I know that, Cora, but we can’t let them forget that we were here. Those names,” she said and pointed to the door frame, “need to mean something after we’re gone.”

Paige said, “I can go get him,” and hurried out of the kitchen.

Cora sat down across from her mother and placed her hand on Eva’s. “Are you sure?”

“I know you feel it, Cora. When we stood in that living room we all did. This cabin soaked up pieces of us, of our lives. We can’t let that be erased.”

“I agree, Mom. I’ve always thought that.”

The pair sat in silence, holding each other’s hands, until the screen door slammed and the sound of two voices approached the back room of the cabin.

“Mrs. Porter,” a man in a green park ranger uniform greeted her and took off his hat. “Thank you for talking to me.”

“You might as well sit down,” she said and motioned to the chair. “And you might as well call me Eva. I imagine you’ll know more about me and my family than my neighbors back home by the time we leave on Monday.”