Chapter 3 — Ruining Thanksgiving

When I came into the kitchen proper my father was already behind his newspaper, and my mother was already stirring cream into her coffee with the small precise motions of a woman who has decided not to look up, and neither of them said good morning either.

It runs in the family, not saying good morning.

It’s a way of letting you know where you stand.

I must have made some sound — I don’t think I was crying, I’d gotten good at not crying where they could see, but grief has a weight that leaks out of you even when your eyes are dry — because my father lowered the paper an inch and gave me a look I knew intimately, because he’d worn the exact same one at the graveside twelve hours before.

Irritation.