The next year, I’m holding roly-poly Ivy in my arms. I’m wearing my favorite sundress and crying in the picture. So is Ivy. This time, I didn’t want to go to school because I didn’t want to leave Ivy. I was convinced she needed me more than she needed my mom. I don’t even remember now why I thought that. But I had helped make her nursery out of the old attic we’d renovated; it was next to my bedroom and much closer to my room than my parents’ room downstairs. I was always the first one to hear her crying. Sometimes I’d carry her down to my mom in the middle of the night to nurse.

In the third picture, I’m headed off to second grade and Ivy is standing next to me. This time, I look thrilled to go to school, but Ivy is in tears again, tugging at the hem of my shirt as if she thought she was strong enough to keep me there.

The pictures go on and on, year after year, showing how we grew apart and together again, all on those front steps of our house.

When my mom finally stops crying, she slowly pulls her head away from me. My shirt is damp with her tears and runny nose stuff. My mom squeezes my shoulders but doesn’t look up.

She takes a deep breath. Then another.

“We’re losing the house?” I ask quietly.

She nods.

“Forever?”

She nods again.

I stare at the first-day-of-school pictures again. At the wallpaper behind them. I remember helping my mom research what pattern to get, and figuring out what the walls would have looked like when the house was built, back in the 1800s. I learned how to measure and cut the strips of paper, wet them with a special sponge, then help my parents set each one on the wall just so. The wallpaper looked old-fashioned and strange, but it made the house feel special. Like we were living in a museum.

Through the years, my parents lovingly repaired each room in this house. Fixing walls, caulking windows, reshingling the roof, scraping and painting the outside for hours in the hot summer sun. This was supposed to be the house they never left. They used to say someday Ivy and I would bring our own children here, to visit their grandparents.

This place is more than a house; it’s a family member. We can’t live anywhere else. It’s part of us.

My mom wipes her face with the sleeve of her shirt. Carefully she folds the notice and puts it back inside the envelope.

“What if we go to the bank and ask for more time?” I ask. “I could get another job. I could babysit the Grayson twins. Or —”

“We’ve tried all that,” my mom says quietly. “This is it.”