“‘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”
against what had come back. Not in bitterness. I was too tired for bitterness that night. But just as a tally.
The holidays I had attended when I could have stayed at work. The Sunday calls from whatever city I happened to be in. The money I sent for Cassidy’s wedding when I couldn’t make it in person. The card I wrote in three drafts.
