I counted without meaning to. My brain clung to numbers because numbers don’t shift. They don’t say one thing and mean another. They don’t smile at you while they stab.
Thirty hands.
Thirty.
Only two people didn’t raise theirs: Uncle Silas and Aunt Lillian, his wife. They sat there stiff-backed, hands in their laps, looking like the only ones in the room who remembered what Christmas was supposed to be.
My chest felt hollow enough to echo.
I had come to my grandfather’s house because he had called me himself a week earlier and asked me to bring Ivy and Hazel for dinner. His voice on the phone had sounded warm, almost relieved, like he had been waiting for this. He told me he missed Hazel. He told me he wanted to see all of us. He told me seven o’clock.
I’d driven here believing—like an idiot, like a man who never learns—that this time might be different.
Now the room was voting on whether I deserved to remain in it.
I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could force any words past my throat, my uncle Silas stood up so quickly his chair scraped loudly across the hardwood.
“That’s enough,” he said, voice sharp, shaking with fury. “It’s Christmas. For God’s sake.”