It would have been easier if they’d shouted. Easier if they’d thrown plates, if they’d used words sharp enough to cut clean. But this—this quiet, almost organized cruelty—was worse. They were so comfortable with it. They had turned my life into something they could dismiss with a gesture.
My father, Victor, held his hand up first. He looked straight at me while he did it, his face set like a man signing a contract. Next was my younger brother, Trent—beer in one hand, the other hand raised with a crooked smirk as if he’d been waiting years for a moment that finally made him feel taller than me.
Then my uncles—Warren and Edgar—hands up, confident. Their spouses followed. Their kids followed. Distant cousins followed. People I barely knew followed. Some hesitated, but then my grandfather’s voice cut across the room like a whip.
“Come on,” Grandpa Everett snapped. “I don’t have all day.”
That was all it took.
The reluctant hands lifted. The fence-sitters joined in. Even Aunt Miriam—who had once pinched my cheek when I was ten and called me “sweet boy”—raised her hand like she was choosing a side in a game.