They made their way up the bluff. Just as they got to the top, Ann stopped and set her hands on her hips. There the house stood as familiar to them as their own bodies in the mirror: the old red-brick chimney, the weathered shingles, the narrow, multipaned windows. “Isn’t it funny?” Ann said. “I used to blame this house for blowing up our family. I thought everything would have been different if we could have just stayed in one place. But now … I don’t know. Without it, what would have happened to all of us?”

That very night, Poppy hid a small, wooden fertility doll between the mattress and the box spring of the twin bed she’d slept in her whole life, pulled up the covers, and invited Brad to squeeze in with her. She knew the doll worked, a secret that made her smile while she packed to take off the next day. Brad begged her to stay, but she knew she had to leave (and return) on her own terms.

Nobody in her family had ever been good at leaving.

At night, the Portuguese women spilled olive oil into the water and said prayers for the fishermen to come back to them alive and well. Poppy watched them at the shore in the moonlight, thinking of how much had changed in the past year. Michael, Ann, Avery, and Noah now lived in the old house on the other shore. It was hard to believe that Michael was part of the family again, and Ann was now working with him on his toy business. Noah and Avery, she’d said, were practically siblings, while Ann and Michael were far more than that. At the funeral, Poppy had spied, peeking out from under the collar on the back of Ann’s shirt, a tattoo of the British farthing her father had found under the support beam of the house when they were kids. The original builder of the house must have placed it there for good luck. Poppy almost said something to Ann—“You got inked? Really?” Ann was the last person she’d imagine with a tattoo. But she didn’t say a word, because she’d spied the same tattoo on the back of Michael’s bicep.

Her family had been stressed and reconfigured, but it still held, just like the house across the ocean. It was still theirs, still in the family, still vulnerable to the elements, still requiring upkeep. It was an anchor, yes, but one that held her in place.

Acknowledgments

They say you should write what you know, and I couldn’t write about the importance of family without knowing the deep and sustaining love of family myself.