And I pulled the door almost closed, leaving just a warm beam of light spilling into the hall, because I had learned, that terrible night and in all the gentler nights since, what family actually is.

Family is not a wealthy last name, or a gated estate, or the obligations of blood.

Family is what happens when a frightened child knocks on a door in the dark, and you open it wide, and you step out into the storm, and you carry him home.

That is the whole of it, in the end, the entire lesson of that terrible night distilled into a single image.

There were two houses in this story.