“‘This is Diana—our family dropout,’ my mother said for the fifteenth Thanksgiving in a row, but when my sister’s new husband reached across the table to shake my hand, his grip locked, his face went still, and the room forgot how to laugh before he said the two words nobody there was prepared to hear”

habitual. The laugh of people who have heard the same line at enough dinners that it has lost all weight, become something you move around without looking at.

I smiled at the tablecloth and reached for the bread basket.

Across the table, Ethan Marsh stood to reach across and shake my hand formally, Cassidy’s prompting, the belated introduction between continue reading …