My mother opened my gift at a country club in suburban Denver, under crystal chandeliers and a banner that said “Happy 60th, Linda!” in looping gold letters. From what my cousin later told me, she saved my box for last. It was small, about the size of her palm, wrapped in plain white paper with a navy ribbon because I knew she hated flashy bows.
She held it up for her guests like she was hosting an awards show, smiling her practiced smile, the one she used for church photo directories and Christmas cards. “This one is from Nora,” she announced. She expected jewelry.
Or a sentimental keepsake she could brag about. Something that proved, even in my absence, that I was devoted. Instead, when she lifted the lid and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside, the color drained from her face so fast that even the server refilling water glasses noticed.
According to my cousin, there was a beat of pure, suspended silence. Then my dad leaned closer and whispered, “What did you do?”
By the time that question reached my kitchen, my phone was already buzzing on the counter beside the fruit bowl and Sienna’s abandoned math workbook. I let it ring twice before I answered. Three nights earlier, I had been sitting at my parents’ dining table in Aurora, trying not to knock over a candle that cost more than my electric bill. My mom loved to host “proper” dinners. That was what she called them.
The kind with cloth napkins folded into complicated shapes and wineglasses that never made it into the dishwasher because they were “too nice.” The table looked like it had been styled by a magazine called People Who Have Never Met Children. Heavy crystal, a fragile centerpiece, not a plastic cup in sight. Mom sat at the head like a queen presiding over a very small kingdom.
Dad hovered at her right, popping up and down from his chair in a constant effort to keep things running smoothly, refilling water, checking the roast, tidying, as if harmony could be maintained with enough trips to the kitchen. Across from me, my younger sister Katie lounged like she was born in that chair. Her husband, Nick, sat beside her with the polite, trapped smile of a man who had been listening to a conversation about paint colors for the last forty minutes and knew there was no escape.
