Chương 1
"My mother waited until Theo had ketchup on his Easter shirt before she told me not to bring him next year.
“Next time, don’t bring the boy.”
She said it across my aunt Denise’s patio table in the same practical tone she used when asking someone to pass the salt.
For a second, I thought I had misunderstood her.
Twenty-three relatives sat beneath the striped awning, surrounded by half-empty plates, plastic cups, deviled eggs sweating in the afternoon heat, and pastel napkins that kept lifting whenever the breeze came through.
My father lowered his eyes to his ham.
Aunt Denise suddenly became very interested in cutting a dinner roll.
My cousin Eric took a drink.
Nobody asked what she meant.
That was how I knew everybody understood.
Theo was sitting beside me with his sneakers hooked around the chair legs, trying to scrape a red stain from the front of his pale blue polo with his thumbnail.
He stopped.
My daughter Marlo stopped too.
At thirteen, Marlo had developed the unnerving ability to go completely still when she was angry.
My mother, Patricia, mistook stillness for obedience.
She had been making that mistake for years.
“What did you say?” I asked.
Mom sighed as though I had forced her to repeat directions she had already explained twice.
“I said next time you come, leave Theo with a sitter.”
Theo’s hand slid under the table and found mine.
His palm was sticky.
“Why?” I asked.
Mom glanced around the table before answering.
That glance hurt more than I expected because it was not the glance of somebody about to say something shocking.
It was the glance of somebody checking whether the committee remained behind her.
“We all agreed this would be easier.”
My father rubbed his thumb along the edge of his paper plate.
I looked at him.
“Dad?”
He did not look up.
Mom continued.
“The holidays have been difficult enough lately, and he requires so much attention.”
“He’s six.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“Then tell me what you mean.”
Denise murmured my name.
Not as a warning to Mom.
As a warning to me.
That was when Marlo pushed her chair back.
The metal legs dragged against the concrete with a sound sharp enough to turn every face toward her.
She stood.
“Say that again.”
Mom gave a little laugh.
“Marlo, sit down.”
Marlo did not move.
“This is an adult conversation.”
“Then maybe you should start acting like one.”
Someone inhaled hard at the far end of the table.
My father finally looked up.
“Marlo.”
She turned on him so quickly that he stopped there.
“What?”
His mouth remained open for a moment.
Marlo’s voice dropped.
“You were sitting here.”
Dad looked at me instead.
That was another family habit.
When one of my children became inconvenient, somehow I was expected to absorb the inconvenience for everybody.
“Sweetheart,” Mom said, “nobody is attacking your brother.”
“You just told Mom not to bring him to Easter.”
“I said next time.”
“Oh, okay.”
Marlo nodded once.
“That makes it way nicer.”
“Enough.”
Mom’s face tightened.
Theo squeezed my fingers.
“Mom?”
I bent toward him.
He was staring at his grandmother.
“Does Grandma not love me?”
Nobody moved.
Somewhere beyond the fence, a lawn mower started.
The ridiculous normality of the sound nearly undid me.
Theo’s lower lip trembled, and he tried to pull it in between his teeth because he had recently decided crying was something babies did.
I had been trying to break him of that idea.
I had apparently brought him to the wrong place.
I pushed my chair back.
“Get your backpack.”
Mom rolled her eyes.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
Marlo grabbed Theo’s backpack from beneath the chair before he could move.
“Come on, buddy.”
“Claire, don’t turn this into a production.”
That stopped me.
For forty-one years, my mother had been able to pull me backward with a sentence.
She could make me thirteen again with one disappointed look.
She could make a favor feel like repayment for being born.
She could make my anger embarrass me before I had even expressed it.
I looked around the table.
Uncle Rob was staring at his phone.
Denise had started stacking plates that did not need stacking.
My cousin Lydia gave me a tiny sympathetic frown, the sort people give strangers whose credit card gets declined at a grocery store.
Nobody said Patricia was wrong.
Nobody said Theo should stay.
Nobody even told him they loved him.
I picked up my purse.
“If you can’t treat a six-year-old like family, then I have no reason to keep treating you like mine.”
Mom’s expression changed.
Not to regret.
To offense.
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Probably.”
I took Theo’s hand.
“I’ve learned from experts.”
Marlo made a sound that might have been a laugh if she had not been so close to crying.
We walked out through Denise’s kitchen.
On the counter sat the lemon bars I had made at six that morning because Mom had texted the night before to remind me that store-bought desserts looked lazy.
I almost took them.
Then I imagined myself carrying a tray of lemon bars during a family estrangement and left them there.
Nobody followed us.
That part stayed with me.
Not Mom.
Not Dad.
Not one of the twenty-three people who had watched a six-year-old ask whether his grandmother loved him.
At the car, Theo climbed into the back seat and immediately began struggling with his seat belt.
Marlo helped him without speaking.
I sat behind the wheel and stared at Denise’s garage door.
My hands would not stop shaking.
After a minute, Marlo leaned forward between the seats.
“Mom.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re gripping the steering wheel like you’re trying to kill it.”
“I said I’m fine.”
She sat back.
The silence that followed had teeth.
I closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
“Okay.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
May you like
She looked out the window.
“I’m mad you let them do that for so long.”
