I Paid Twelve Thousand Five Hundred Dollars for a Family Trip, and They Planned It Without Me

“Christmas morning I’ll turn it on.” I slid the drawer shut.

“Maybe.”

The screen lit through the gap, bright enough to throw a thin white stripe across the floorboards.

Lucas’s name.

Then the stripe went dark.

Helen saw it.

Neither of us said anything about it.

“I did this same thing in 1998,” she said.