There's something different about this time on the Cape. We're spending a week here with the extended family. It's longer than normal, but that's not what makes it different.

There's this coldness amongst the family this year. I'm trying to hold it together, but there's so much silence in conversation. Not so much eye contact. The oddness between my father and his brother has persisted for years, but now it feels like it's weighing down all of us. I don't know what happened between them, and neither does a lot of the extended family.

I could be imagining it. My mother, my brother and I walk into a room and I feel like my ears should be burning. My brother is furious with a lot of them. I don't have to try to hard to be happy around them, we share goddamn blood. They fascinate me. But there's just something dark and paranoia-inducing in everyone's eyes here. I feel like an outsider.

We need the sun to come out, and from the looks of it, we might have a couple of days.