My sister announced in the family group chat that I was officially banned from the reunion—and made it clear no one was to tell me where it would be. I didn’t argue. I didn’t reply. I simply opened the location pin… and laughed so hard I had to cover my mouth.

It looks like the kind of house people in linen advertisements inherit from grandparents with old money and discreet alcoholism.

It also looks, with exquisite accuracy, like exactly the kind of place my family thinks they deserve.

My mother, Linda, is the first one out of the lead SUV. Of course she is. She does not enter spaces. She arrives. She emerges in a flowing floral caftan and a straw hat wide enough to cast a theatrical shadow over her cheekbones, one hand already lifted in command before both feet are fully on the ground. Even from here, even through the windshield, even with the windows up, I know the rhythm of her voice as surely as I know my own pulse. She is issuing instructions before the rest of them have even straightened from their seats. Her fingers cut the air. Her bracelets flash. She points at the front steps, at the coolers, at the luggage, at my father, at my brother, at the universe.

She looks like a woman who believes she has secured a kingdom.