“When?”
“June.”
“For how much?”
I nearly laughed.
Of everything she could have asked, that question sounded the most like my family.
“Why does that matter?”
“Because your sister says houses like that cost millions.”
“They do.”
Mom exhaled sharply.
Then the conversation went exactly where I knew it would.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
I looked through the glass doors.
Grandma Evelyn was eating leftover pumpkin pie at nine in the morning while Uncle Raymond cheerfully argued with Peter about football.
“Because nobody asked.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No. What’s ridiculous is telling people every year that there isn’t enough room, that transportation is too hard, that personalities don’t mix, or that certain relatives will make dinner uncomfortable. I had enough room, so I invited them.”
“You made us look terrible.”
There it was.
Not We hurt people.
Not We should have included them.
Not even I wish we had been there.
“You’re worried about how the pictures looked,” I said.
“I’m worried that twenty relatives now think we deliberately excluded them.”
“You did deliberately exclude them.”
Mom went silent.
Ten minutes after our call ended, Melissa rang.
She was much less careful.
“You embarrassed me.”
“I served turkey.”
“You knew what you were doing.”
“Yes.”
“At a mansion.”
“It’s a farmhouse.”
“Claire, don’t be cute.”
I could hear Grant in the background telling her to ask something else.
Melissa lowered her voice.
“Did Dad give you money?”
“No.”
“Did Grandma?”
“No.”
“Then how did you afford that place?”
That was when I finally understood something I probably should have recognized years ago.
My family had created an entire version of me in their minds.
Claire, the quiet younger daughter.
