I don’t have much time to ponder this because my phone buzzes in my pocket from my mom’s text and I pull it out only to see the words, Will you come to the house right away please, written across my screen.

I AM A fixer.

When I was four and broke my mother’s favorite necklace while trying it on, I spent three hours in my tree house trying to glue it back together. I succeeded only in gluing several fingers together. Senior year when Mia was hit by the truck and nearly paralyzed, I sat by her side every day for the entire summer she spent in a toe-to-waist cast. I knew that if I sat there long enough she would need something and I would be there, ready. I brought her DVDs and ridiculous teen magazines. I painted her nails and went so far as to smuggle the oddest things into her room—wine coolers; her boyfriend, Luke; her cat—just to see her smile. When Lola’s father was sent to Afghanistan—and then when he returned, shaken and different, and Lola’s mom abandoned them both for good—I brought groceries and dinners, anything that would take the tiniest burden off them. And when Ansel was too man-brained to fix things with Mia, I forced my way in there, too.

When my friends need something, I do it. When someone I love can’t solve a problem, I find a way. For better or worse, it’s what I do.

So when I pull into the drive and sit down beside my little sister and across from our parents in our light, airy, happy family room—a room that, right now, feels like a tomb—I’m immediately on high alert. On an average day, our family is boisterous. Right now, we are silent. I feel like I should whisper my hellos. The curtains are open, but the thick fog of the marine layer outside makes the room feel gloomy and dark.

My family is—and has always been—the center of my world. My mom was an actress when my parents got married, and Dad’s career didn’t take off until I hit high school. So when I was little, Dad and I would travel with Mom from one set to the next. Until my sister Bellamy was born when I was six, it was just the three of us most of the time.

Dad is the emotionally intuitive, nurturing one, all creative energy and passion. Mom is the beautiful, calm centering force in our family, leading the house with a wink behind my father’s broad shoulders. But right now she sits next to him, gripping his hand in both of hers, and I can see from across the low coffee table that she’s sweating.