I finally bought my dream house and invited my family to come see it. No one showed up. Later that night, my dad texted, “We need to talk about the house.” By then, something inside me had already shifted.

Saturday I spent the entire day in the kitchen. I made my mother’s favorite, a slow-roasted chicken with rosemary and garlic that I had practiced for weeks until it was right, the kind of dish that fills a house with warmth for hours. Creamy mashed potatoes. Green beans with lemon and toasted almonds. A lemon tart from scratch using a recipe Kevin and I had made together as children before he decided baking was not compatible with the version of himself he was trying to become. I bought my father a bottle of the expensive red wine he loved but rarely spent money on for himself. I bought sunflowers for the table. I set the good silverware and the cloth napkins and put balloons over the doorway that spelled HOME in silver letters. I lit candles. I put on a playlist of my father’s favorite classic rock. By six-thirty the house looked like something that had earned the occasion being held in it.

I sat on the couch and waited.