“Sweetheart.

You’re a guest.”

“I drove to Duluth in February for my sister’s surgery.”

“You’re a guest,” she said again, and smiled over the top of the mug.

Her phone lit up where it lay between us, face up, and I saw a photograph.

A booth at a restaurant, red vinyl, all of them crowded in, Lucas on the end with his arm up, a basket of rolls in the middle of the table.

Nobody had asked me to that dinner.