Page 17

My smile is stiff. I rise to my feet and grab the cocoa tray with the excuse of mopping it off—I need to hurry to the kitchen before my tears betray me.

“Fine, all right.” I take a bracing breath and inject warmth into my expression, turning away and saying over my shoulder, “It’s going to be fine. This won’t ruin Christmas.”

The morning after Auntie Min drops the parent-bomb, I hear a car pull up while I’m in the bathroom getting ready.

Instinctively I shut the door and lock it, then hold the edge of the sink, listening to the ambient sounds of their arrival.

Strange voices. Minnie’s familiar tones, gone high with emotion—she’s crying.

A bit of laughter. Kitchen chairs barking against the linoleum.

The clang of a kettle hitting the sink as it’s filled.

If I wait much longer, Minnie will come get me, and I don’t want to be dragged in like a cowering child. I’m eight years older now than they were when they dumped me with Minnie to take off on a one-way trip to Los Angeles. I’m the grown-up here, dammit. Not them.

I open the door and stride down the hall.

Jason looks up as I pause in the doorway. Sherri swivels, white-knuckling the chair back. No one speaks. My legs feel like water, but I stand rigid.

Minnie comes toward me, hand out as one might coax a bird to eat from their palm. “They’re here, honey.”

I lift my chin. “So I see.”

Jason stands and pulls out a chair between himself and Sherri, across from where Minnie’s favorite coffee mug marks her place. I go to Minnie’s spot and claim it, sliding her mug across the table to the place where Jason grips the finials of the rejected chair.

I look at each of them with the What do you have to say for yourself? energy of a school principal.

“Merry Christmas, baby,” Sherri ventures in a hopeful voice.

Jesus, I’d forgotten it’s Christmas Day. Minnie and I had our festivities last night—I think she suggested opening the rest of the presents to jolly me out of my bad mood after the parental-return revelation—and since waking, there’s been nothing but the horrible countdown to this moment.

Both of them stare. Jason’s eyes—blue as Minnie’s and mine—glisten with emotion.

He looks at Sherri, his expression between joy and panic. “My God, Pinkie… she looks just like you.”

“She has your eyes, though,” she responds immediately.

A quarter-century on the West Coast hasn’t scrubbed away Jason’s rural Kentucky twang, but Sherri—who was a “city gal” from Lexington when she met my father—sounds flatter, more like me. I expected their voices to give me a shock of recognition, but… nothing .

“I’m sitting right here,” I say coldly, “so please don’t talk about me like I’m a piece of furniture.”

“ Natty…” Auntie Min whispers.

“I have things I need to get back to today,” I lie. “Let’s… uh”—I lift my hands, then drop them to my lap, a conductor who’s forgotten the music—“do the catching up and get on with our lives.”

“We’re real proud of you,” Jason says. “Been reading everything you write.”

“Cool,” I respond, blasé.

“ Natty! ” Minnie whispers with more urgency. She fixes Jason with a pleading look. “For pity’s sake, Jace. Quit dragging this out. Tell her, so she’ll understand.”

Sherri plants both hands over her eyes like a child in a game of hide-and-seek. The words spill out of her in a rush, tense with held-back tears.

“We didn’t plan to leave you here forever—we were just going on ahead to get settled.

Everything in L.A. was expensive and the apartment was in a bad neighborhood, and we knew you were better off here until we could afford something safer.

We were so broke it started to seem like that’d never happen, so we started doing some…

delivery work.” Her hands slide down to her cheeks.

“For a… a drug dealer. It was stupid, but we figured as long as we weren’t selling it or using it—”

“You weren’t using your damned heads ,” Minnie inserts under her breath.

“—it didn’t seem as bad, but…” Sherri trails off, lowering to rest her head on the table.

After a pause, I speak up. “Lemme guess, you guys got caught and went to prison.” I’m surprised at how impassive I sound. It’s like a story that has no connection to me. I’m just a reader, spying the plot twist in a disappointing book.

“ I did, yes,” Sherri confesses, deflated. “But it wasn’t like you probably think.”

It’s seven hours ahead in Romania, where Phaedra is spending the holidays with Cosmin. Two o’clock in the morning here, and I can’t sleep. I send Phae a text.

Me: You awake?

Phae: Duh of course. When do I evr sleep in? The question is what are YOU doing up

Me: I have a car question, and you can build engines and stuff, so I figured you’re the one to ask. Can a car really be “hot-wired” with a screwdriver, or is that just in movies?

Phae: Okay that’s random AF. Many cars up til the mid 90s could be hot-wired with a flathead screwdriver, yeah. Why?

I flop back onto the pillows with a sigh, thinking over the conversation with my parents this afternoon. I pick up the phone again.

Me: Bc my mother apparently killed someone with a screwdriver, and I guess I was trying to find a lie in her story. She said she had it in her bag bc she and my dad had this janky old car and that was how they started it.

Phae: HOLY SHITMONKEYS. What??? Your mom is a screwdriver killer? This sounds like the plot to a 90s dark comedy

Phae: Sorry, not funny

I laugh a little, despite myself, at the absurdity of it all, and it’s actually such a relief—I don’t think I’ve smiled all day.

Me: She’s been in prison for 25 yrs, Phae. Jason stayed in Cali to be near her. They never wanted me to know but had a change of heart after Sherri got out.

Phae: Did she tell you why she did it?

Me: She was working for a drug dealer and someone tried to rape her. Prosecution said the guy could’ve lived if she’d called an ambulance. Her public defender was crap. Also she wouldn’t inform on the dealer, bc she was afraid Jason would get killed for it.

Phae: I’m so sorry, Nat. WOW. Fuck. I wish I could hug you, and you know I hate hugging

Me: Second question: Auntie Min said I date older unavailable guys bc of my parents. That seems too obvious, too cliché. She’s wrong, isn’t she?

There’s a very long pause before the reply comes through.

Phae: Everyone’s a cliché sometimes