Matt stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the ship that had fallen from the sky. She had once been a multi-million dollar craft, one that he’d bought outright with the proceeds from the first three custom homes he’d completed. He’d had so many plans for her; sail around the world with his family… When he had the time away from work, of course.

  Funny how ‘time away from work’ never really seemed to materialize.

  Now, she wasn’t even fit for a bathtub. Her keel was flattened out, her hull stove in in spots and just plain missing in others. The fore deck looked like a bomb had detonated inside of it. Who knew what the belowdecks looked like.

  He took a deep breath and let it out. Well. No use standing around gawping at it. There was work to be done. He’d have to get inside and assess the damage, see what could be salvaged, make a plan for shifting debris and maybe see about converting her from a yacht–she would never sail again, he didn’t need to be an expert boatwright to see that–into something more suitable for their current predicament.

  He glanced back at his family. Except for Allie, they were all seated on rocks or leaning up against purple-trunked trees. They looked… Absolutely wrung out, if he was being honest. And if he were being even more honest, he probably looked about the same.

  Let them rest, he decided. They’ve had a long day. I can get started on the work, give them time to get themselves back together.

  “Alright guys,” he said, turning back to them. “I’m going to go inside and see what needs to be done, make sure she’s stable enough to actually move through without danger. You all get some rest, and when I get back we’ll see what needs to be tackled, okay?”

  Yeah, this was good. He could already feel his heart lightening with the prospect of work. He just had to get his hands moving, just get himself something he could do, and he’d be better. And then he could come back and make sure everyone was okay and get them organized and doing what they needed to do.

  Yeah. That’s the ticket.

  Allie didn’t say anything, just stood there with her eyes scanning left and right. Searching for threats, just like she must have done back in the desert. Olivia and Lucas just nodded, too tired for words. Dinah didn’t respond, sat on the ground near Olivia with her knees hugged up to her chest.

  Isabel started to say something, then huffed a sigh and looked away from him. “Sure dad. Go and do your work. Just like always.”

  It was the tone of her voice that made him stop and turn back, his eyebrows beetling together. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Allie’s gaze snap onto their oldest daughter.

  “Bel?” he asked slowly. “Is something wrong?”

  Isabel turned back to him, her eyes wide enough that white showed all around her dark irises.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked, and her tone was disbelieving. “Are you for real right now? We got killed and now we’re on some freaky desert island with monsters that want to kill us again and boats that fall out of the sky and you want to know if something is wrong? No, wait, never mind,” she held up her hand and shook her head, cutting off Matt’s response.

  “You just go ahead and bury your head in work,” she continued, and somehow she made the word ‘work’ sound like the filthiest word God had ever created. “No need to pay attention to us. No need to just taking a fucking minute with your family. Not when there’s work that needs to be done, right?”

  “Isabel,” Alejandra’s voice was like a whipcrack. “Now is not the time! Tu papa is–”

  “Is what?” The tall teen rounded on her mother. “Is some workaholic who runs away from his family and his problems and shoves his head into his work so he doesn’t have to deal with us? Oh, I’m sorry, I meant so he doesn’t have to deal with you?”

  Matt felt like a prizefighter had just socked him in the gut as Allie’s head snapped back like Bel had just slapped her hard across the face. He stared open-mouthed at his oldest daughter, and saw that her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

  “Neither of you are ever here,” she snarled at them both. “Dad’s always at work. And Mom,” she rounded on Allie. “You’ve been leaving this family ever since you got back from ‘the war’. Because it’s always the war. It’s never you and your stupid fault, it’s the war’s fault!”

  “Stop it Bel!” Olivia practically wailed from where she was huddled up next to Dinah.

  “Oh shut up,” Bel snapped at her sister. “You’re as bad as dad, always burying your head in books or video games, trying to pretend like everything is fine. Well it’s not fine, is it?” She went back to Allie. “You never answered my question Mom,” she all but snarled, then turned her burning tear-filled glare on Matt. “From dinner last night? Or whenever? Are you getting a divorce? Because, you know,” she huffed a hysterical little laugh, “if one of you is gonna leave us, probably best to get it out of the way right now, y’know? Before you have to beat up another fucking crab together or something.”

  “Of course we’re not splitting up,” Matt said lamely, looking at Allie for her support in this. “We would never…”

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  “Tu papa is correct,” Allie said quietly, trying… and failing? To meet her daughter’s gaze. Matt blinked at that. “We would not even think of splitting up. Certainly not now.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Bel said scornfully. “You’re staying together for the kids, right? God you two are such hypocrites. You two would totally be gone if we hadn’t gotten killed, right? Is that what it takes?”

  Matt opened his mouth to reply–and realized he didn’t have any words. That, more than anything else from the past twenty-four hours, shocked him to his core. He had no response to his daughter’s accusations. Nor, it seemed, did Allie, who was staring wide-eyed and pale-faced at Isabel.

  Someone else, however, had a response ready.

  The rock was a small one, and it zipped in from the side to crack against Bel’s shoulder. The teen yelped out a curse and whirled, and there was Olivia, her hands balled into fists and another rock at the ready.

  “I said shut up Bel! Why are you being such a bitch all of a sudden? You know, you’re not the greatest person in this family either. Mom and dad are splitting up? You yell at them for leaving the family? Well you’ve been leaving for years! You were moving away for college? Spending as much time out of the house as you could? Leaving us–” Olivia hiccupped and sucked in a deep breath of air through her nose, “leaving me behind to clean up everything? Who was gonna hold everything together when Mom left, huh?”

  “Please stop fighting,” Lucas’s voice was thready and quavering. His son had tears streaming down his cheeks. “Please stop.”

  No one listened. Bel shouted something back at Olivia. Olivia responded by throwing another rock, and then Bell tackled her sister full-on and they were rolling and wrestling on the ground. Allie darted in and tried to separate them, and wound up taking one of Bel’s elbows right in the nose. She staggered back, blood leaking down her lip. Then her eyes narrowed and she marched back in, and this time she was not gentle.

  Lucas was weeping quietly on his rock, curled up around himself as he stared at the chaos.

  And Matt? Matt just stood there, open-mouthed, as his family fell apart around him.

  And for good reason, a voice in his head whispered in the same tone the serpent must have used when talking about apples. Bel’s right, isn’t she? You have been running away from this. For years now. Or were those long nights at the office and those weekends on the job sites really that necessary?

  How many little league games have you missed? How many recitals? Hell, how many quiet moments with your children at home in front of the fire? How many scraped knees? How many broken hearts? How many excited smiles and blurted-out excuses?

  How much Time?

  Bile rose up in the back of his throat, and he felt his eyes start to burn with tears. He looked at his children fighting with each other, watched his wife come and yank them apart, and knew he’d failed as a father and a husband both. Bel was right. He should just–

  He stopped. He felt a pit yawning underneath his feet, and felt like he’d only just seen it at the last second.

  Should just what?

  Leave?

  That might have been an option back on Earth, but they weren’t on Earth were they? Where would he go? How could he leave when his family–broken and bleeding as it may be–was alone and scared on an alien world about which they knew exactly nothing?

  On Earth he could have granted Allie the divorce she had been talking about. He could have let her move out, could have thrown himself into work to keep his children fed and housed, hired someone to come in and watch them, and lived in blissful ignorance as they all grew more and more distant from him and each other. And they would have wound up like any other broken family; mailing each other christmas cards if they were lucky, and moving on with their lives that no longer connected with each other.

  On Earth, this would have been when his family disintegrated.

  But here? Now?

  That option wasn’t even on the table, was it. He could no more turn tail and run than he could will them all back home.

  This house is broken. The words rang inside his mind. Its foundation is cracked and uneven. You’ve spent years breaking it with your own hands. Is it any wonder the walls are tumbling down around your ears?

  To fix the house, you have to fix the foundation first. Everything else flows from that.

  Up until now, the foundation he’d been building this house, this family has been one of neglect and distance. He’d shown his children that they didn’t matter to him as much as his job. He and Allie had their problems, true enough, but right now it was the children that were in the most pain. And it was his fault. Their fault, technically, but the thoughts were in his head and not in Allie’s.

  Fix the foundation.

  How did you repair a foundation you’d spent years breaking? Where did you even start? And how did you do it when your entire family had just been thrust into a strange situation right out of a fantasy book? Not to mention when half of that family was in the middle of trying to kill each other?

  His eyes shifted to Allie, holding onto her daughter's wrists with a grip that was turning her knuckles white. The sun–setting in what he was fairly sure was not the west–shone a soft beam that caught something shiny on her finger. Her wedding ring.

  She still wore her ring, even after everything.

  An image of their wedding day flashed through his mind. Allie, standing across from him, resplendent in her white dress as they faced each other in front of the priest. He could still feel the tremor in his hands as he reached for hers, and found them shaking just as much as his. He remembered the silken feel of her fingers against his as they spoke their vows to each other–

  Vows.

  His brain hiccupped, and the image disappeared as an idea blazed across his mind.

  He took two seconds to examine it from all the angles he could think of as the shouting and fighting on the beach increased. He didn’t have enough time to really get into the details, just the broad strokes. But it seemed serviceable.

  It wouldn’t fix everything. Might not even fix anything. But it was a start. It was a foundation he could build upon. It would get them started.

  But first there was the minor problem of his family trying to murder each other that he had to attend to.