The house should have meant nothing to me. She shouldn’t have mattered to me at all.

I had no real connection to her, unless you count the hours I spent looking at the real estate listing photos during the eighteen months she was for sale. But I think we can all agree that this does not constitute a relationship. That this is what we call stalking.

It’s true that I had become smitten—OK, fine, a little obsessed—with her: her beauty, her age, her discretion. I’d begun to believe, as the most delusional of stalkers do, that we had something of a relationship. That we were friends. That I could prevent—or, at least, warn her about—what was ahead.

It wasn’t like I could buy her or anything. It wasn’t like that. Her millions-and-millions price tag was so exorbitant that even in a beach town flush with exorbitant prices, hers was notable, astronomical. The subject of articles in the paper. It was beyond what even her DuPont ties, her graceful 1920s curves, her shingled self-possession could command. Even for her, it was way too much.

And that is how I knew she was doomed.

Her price—her assigned value—had been calculated not from her undeniable loveliness, or the warm way she welcomed you onto her covered porch. Not from the way she graciously guided you down her meandering garden paths. Not from her dormers or her huge screened doors, wide as your arms could reach. Or the sweetly weathered gate on the dunes, or the dock on the lake where you could watch the ospreys and herons take off in the setting sun. Not even from the tony roaring-20s parties she’d hosted, the storms she’d survived, the sanctuary town she’d helped build.

She’d been priced, when it came right down to it, for the land upon which she sat: an almost-acre of oceanfront in a town of quarter-acre lots. A strip of land between the ocean and the freshwater lake impossibly close to it. Land that could be subdivided two or three or four times, built on, profited from. If only she would get out of the way.

The listing photos revealed a younger, more vibrant version of her. This is so often the case with obituaries. There were dozens of interior images, too, snapshots of rich decor and elegant living. I visited daily, zooming in on the wide plank floors and aged antiques, the paneling and oil paintings, swooning at the gravitas of an old-money beach retreat. Again and again, I Google’d her, typing in SHELL HOUSE, or her maiden name, CARPENTER HOUSE, revealing articles about her sale. “The Most Expensive House for Sale in Delaware”, a “Rehoboth house with DuPont roots,” “An Acre of Beachfront.” And about her past, too: photos of a charity event she hosted on her patio, a society-page account of a wedding reception. One article included an oil painting of her in her youth, when she was the only house south of the boardwalk.

Not surprisingly, the listing and research were gateway drugs to what happened next, which is to say that I found myself, quite literally, in her gateway. They say the first hit is always the best, and don’t I know it. It was a thrill to push on the gate near the realtor sign and find it unlocked. In no time, I was on the inside.

But as I got to know her better, and got more hooked, things escalated. I got bolder. I took more chances. Before too long, I was trying I the gate on her other side, hidden by brambles that made me less likely to get caught, but left my arms scratched with tell-tale track marks. I’m not proud to admit I even tried to get some friends and family hooked, bringing them by to see her, urging them to give her a try. I wanted everyone else to see how amazing she could make you feel.

But it was clear that something had happened to her since the listing photos; somewhere along the way, the life had gone out of her. No one ever came by to see her, and the grounds, gorgeously manicured in the picture, were wild and overgrown. Through her wavy-paned windows, you could see that her inside was the only thing sadder than empty: littered with oddly recent household items, baby things and board games scattered on the floor. Odd collections of personal items no one had even bothered to collect.

When the salvage guys started showing up, I knew we didn’t have much time. One day, the cobblestones in front of the garage had been taken up, and then the bricks of the garden paths, leaving only salt and sand. When the verdigris copper lanterns came down, they left holes with wires poking out, exposed.

But the day I arrived to find her windows and doors stacked in the backs of pickups, I knew we’d reached the end. Eager (as stalkers often are) for even a piece of her, I thought of asking where the salvage was headed. I thought that maybe I could buy something to remember her by, a memento of our time together. The front door was open and I leaned in to the foyer, where a once-graceful staircase looked embarrased, its banister and carved skirts half-removed. “Hello?” I called out, listening carefully—hopefully—for a long time. But there was never any answer.

I got busy and forgot to check on her this week. I was walking on the beach this morning, thinking of the things that had kept me busy, when a deafening noise startled me, an ominous, metal-on-metal groan. It was out of place on a beach; it sounded like a train coming off the tracks. Without thinking of her or of anything, I just turned, reflexively, in the direction the sound was coming from.

If anyone had been with me, I would have grabbed their arm and asked, “What’s going on? What’s happening?” in that panicky way that does not allow for an answer, But alone, all I could do was stand and gape, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Why there seemed to be missing between her chimneys, why the blue sky looked out of place. When I heard the sound again, I saw it: a giant arm with a toothed bucket, cruelly presenting, like a cat with a dead mouse, huge clutches of splinters in its teeth.

It was the Shell House, under siege, her whole middle, the part between the chimneys, missing. From a horrible, fatal gash in her side, a single white curtain waved in surrender. And that was when I knew she was really gone.

The truth is, I didn’t even really know her. She didn’t belong to me, or to my family. I didn’t summer there, or even visit—not legally, anyway. I can’t say I remember when she was the only house south of the boardwalk.

But I did love her, in my own pathetic, stalking way. I admired her beauty and her standing and her old-school elegance so much that it became worth it to me—me, a first-child rule follower and bona fide scaredy-cat—to trespass, to risk getting in some trouble. Just to spend another day with her, to see her one more time, to take her picture. To make sure she is remembered when the new houses go up: the ones that have no wrinkles or sags but also haven’t been through anything, seen anything, survived anything.

In the end, all I can do is bear witness, to say that she was here. To remember how I loved her, when she was the Shell House.