When You Come Back to Me

Sometimes you have to leave to learn where you belong.

Two calls come on the same Friday. Nora Costa has never been able to treat that as a coincidence.

One is her sister, ringing at the wrong hour, which Marta never does. The other is a commission: a consortium wants an identity for the development going up on the water at Viana do Castelo, and they want the consultant in the town from March until the council vote in June.

Nora left Viana at nineteen and has come back four times a year ever since, for as few hours as the family will allow. Now she has a reason to stay for four months, an office with a view of the marina that does not exist yet, and a project engineer called Rui Almeida who knew her before she was somebody who left.

The town has an opinion about the development. Her sister has an opinion about her. And the closer the vote comes, the harder it is to keep pretending that the job is the only reason she came back.

An emotional second-chance romance set on the Portuguese Atlantic, about the place you are from, the family you did not stay for, and what it costs to come home properly.