Aunt Helen lowered her paper cup and looked past my mother, directly at me.

I walked over and set the wrapped boxes on the head table beside the glass punch bowl.

“Lucy had a fever on Christmas Eve, Mom,” I said, keeping my voice level.

“You know that.”

“A fever doesn’t leave a six-year-old shivering in a dark closet while the rest of us eat ham,” my mother said, turning her shoulder to block me from the aunts.

“I had to slip that poor child a biscuit from my own coat pocket before Clara hauled her out the front door.”