For Hank, the cabin at Fox Hill Lake was initially a shrine to his parents and a symbol of his wish that his life could go back to the way it was before he told them about his plan to quit his job and marry Dawn instead of Celeste. The narrator describes the cabin as “a time capsule embalmed in grief but also in love” (21). Hank kept the benches near the steps from the beach to the home intact so that the “old folks” could rest—even though no old people lived there during Hank’s lifetime. He also preserved the sagging couch that his father bought his mother shortly after they purchased the place. For his daughters, however, the cabin represents a place of grief, compromise, and growth, and as they process their emotions in the wake of Hank’s death, the cabin becomes a motif of change and highlights the role of Grief as a Catalyst for Personal Transformation.

Initially, Vivian dislikes the cabin and wants to sell it, while Lucy loves the cabin and is desperate to keep it. As time goes on, each woman comes come to understand the other’s viewpoint as they learn to navigate their grief. At first, the “lake’s peaceful beauty is wasted on Vivian” (18), and “she hates the heat and can’t escape it” (39). For Vivian, the cabin represents memories of an unfaithful father she didn’t trust, but for Lucy, however, the house is “a refuge” and a “time capsule, pulling her back to a childhood spent happily in the dark and teen years when she locked away any shred of inferiority and resentment” and spent time with a beloved father whom she didn’t see enough (343).

Ultimately, Vivian softens in her dogged determination to sell the cabin, believing that she should right Hank’s wrongs as far as Lucy is concerned. Even as Vivian changes her stance, Lucy warms to the idea of selling the property and is no longer so frantic to retain it as a memorial to her father. As both daughters’ feelings about the cabin become more moderate, the very name of the realtor’s office—“Gray Realty”—takes on symbolic significance as well, as neither woman’s views remain black and white; instead, they meet somewhere in the “gray” middle. This process shows how much each sister has changed since their initial meeting.