Chapter 11 — Christmas Without Permission

My parents tried to reclaim us just before Christmas, when our absence started to threaten the picture of a united family they liked to show the world.

My father asked me to bring the children for lunch and simply not discuss the past.

My mother wrote that the holidays ought to rise above resentment. Sadie overheard one of the voicemails and asked me, quietly, whether going meant standing on the porch again.

I knelt down so I was looking straight at her.

“You are never going to wait outside that door again,” I said. “Not ever. Nobody gets a second chance to shut you out because you were inconvenient to them once.”

Our tree that year was four feet tall and leaned a little toward the window no matter how I adjusted the stand.