Just got a Zabar’s gift basket from Lola and PERRINE, I wrote.

!!!!!! Cleo wrote back. Wait more importantly Franny how is your mom?

Jim is going to come pick me up and take me back to the hospital. I think it’s going to be a long recovery, but she’ll be okay.

A series of heart emojis. Thank god.

I paused before I typed out the next thing I wanted to say. I had been up throughout the night thinking about it, agonizing over how I could actually help my mom. I texted Cleo my solution.

I’m going to stay out here for a bit to help out.

You’re a good daughter, she wrote back.

Your brother could totally stay at my place for the month while I’m here, I replied.

Ew, Fran, no. He barely knows how to do his own laundry.

I laughed at this, though she was probably right.

I’m serious, I wrote. I could definitely use the money, and then I can stay here and help my mom. Also I broke up with Hayes last night even though we were only together for like 24 hours. It was bad.

I didn’t have the energy to type anything else.

Franny WHAT?!

I’ll call you tonight I promise, I replied, but I gotta go do mom stuff xoxo.

*  *  *

Later, as I lay on my old twin bed, I thought about what it meant to be home. Growing up, I’d always felt out of place: With my mom and Jim. In my house. In my skin. But moving to New York, finding Lola and Cleo, discovering the world of art and design, creating my very own home in my little apartment—those things had shown me what it truly meant to belong. And then Hayes showed up in my life, and he felt both entirely new and utterly familiar, all at once. And all these things together made up the place I wanted to be more than anything in the world.

But I wasn’t there, where I belonged. I was here, staring at the cracked ceiling of my childhood home. I flopped around, trying to get comfortable. I turned over, and on the bookshelf next to me was a framed photo of me as a little kid, hair long and tangled, sitting in my grandmother’s lap, my mom seated next to both of us, her hand on my belly. We’re all grinning, and our smiles look almost identical, a thread connecting the three of us. I let out a sigh, felt the tears creep back into my eyes. Even if this wasn’t home—this place, this house, this family—they were still a part of me. And maybe in my own way, I did belong here too.