Half the Christmas meal was, that very moment, sitting prepped on their kitchen counter, because I had made it.

I had paid for my mother’s heart medication the week before, out of my failing-loser freelance income.

And only three weeks earlier, my father had quietly asked me for four thousand dollars, because his business account was, he said, temporarily tight — and I had given it to him without a word.

That was the negativity they could not have at their table.

I said none of this out loud.

Silence, my grandfather had taught me, is wasted on the deserving.