My daughter barred me from Christmas so her father’s new wife could settle in. “You’re the reason she can’t relax,” she said. I took the holiday shift instead. Then my daughter called after midnight, crying about a government call to her father, and asked why they were looking for me.
She’d asked me to stay away, and now she couldn’t get the question out without stopping for breath.
Her father was somewhere near her, demanding to know whether she’d reached me.
The clock above my desk read 12:17.
My personal phone had rattled against the shift roster, and I’d grabbed it before it could wake the screen again.
Elisa’s name had made me reach faster.
I’d been hoping for a call.
Even a late one.
I’d pictured her slipping away from the dishes with a Christmas greeting just for me.
I’d already decided I wouldn’t mention the invitation.
Then she said, “Mom, somebody from the Defense Department called Clint’s phone.”
She never called him Clint.
“Was it about you?”
My thumb pressed against the edge of the case until it hurt.
A dispatcher beside me was checking whether a transport crew could use a road that had reopened.
Someone needed an answer from our desk.
I couldn’t remember what they’d asked.
“Elisa, slow down.”
“They knew who he was.”
Her breath caught on the next word, and she tried it again.
“They knew he was your husband.”
“Former husband,” I said.
It was a stupid correction with her crying, but it came out anyway.
Four afternoons earlier, she’d stood close enough to fix my collar and told me I couldn’t come.
I’d brought her childhood stocking to the house because she’d wanted it for the mantel.
She’d made the heel crooked when she was nine.
I’d offered to straighten it once, and she’d accused me of ruining her sewing.
So I’d left it crooked.
She was twenty-nine now, and she still checked that heel whenever she unpacked it.
That afternoon, she held it between us while her father shifted a chair away from the Christmas table.
“Mom, we need to change something about dinner.”
I kept my coat over my arm.
“What time?”
She rubbed the stocking’s hanging loop between her fingers.
“No. About who’s coming.”
Clint stopped moving the chair.
I waited for her to finish because she’d started looking at him instead of me.
“Gwen’s having a hard time with all this,” she said.
“With dinner?”
“With feeling that she belongs here.”
Her father stood beside her, close enough that she leaned toward him without taking a step.
I was still holding the toe of the stocking.
“What did you need me to do?”
“Let us have Christmas without you this year.”
There it was.
I let go of the toe, and Elisa pulled the stocking against her cardigan.
I’d already bought what she’d asked me to bring.
She’d reminded me about it herself, twice, because apparently I always made too much.
“Was this decided before you asked for that?”
“Please don’t make this about food.”
Clint pushed the chair back harder than he needed to.
“She’s trying to ask you NICELY.”
I looked at my daughter.
“Did you want me there when you invited me?”
“Of course I did.”
“Then what’s changed?”
She rubbed her cheek with her sleeve, and I hated that I still wanted to reach for her.
“You’re the reason she can’t relax,” she said.
I waited for her to take it back.
She kept holding the stocking.
Clint pointed toward me, his mouth already moving before Elisa had finished wiping her face.
“You walk in here and everything becomes about what you used to do together.”
“I brought what she asked for.”
“Don’t start that shit, Sabrina.”
My coat slipped toward the floor, and I caught it against my hip.
Elisa took a breath through her mouth.
“Could you just give us THIS Christmas?”
I’d missed holidays when I couldn’t get leave.
I’d eaten reheated dinners while she showed me presents through a screen, then listened while she asked when I’d be home.
This year I’d been available.
Apparently that made things harder.
“Gwen needs a chance,” Elisa said.
“And where was I supposed to have dinner?”
“You could do something with people from work.”
She said it quickly, as if she’d found a solution I should have thought of myself.
Clint folded his arms.
“You’re making her feel GUILTY now.”
My daughter was crying in front of me because she wanted me to agree to leave.
I could’ve argued until she admitted that much.
I’d still have had to walk out.
“All right,” I said.
She lifted her head.
“You understand?”
“I heard you.”
Her father moved out of my way before I’d put my coat on.
Elisa followed me as far as the door with the stocking still in her hand.
“Can we please not let this spoil everything?”
I had nothing to say to that.
I got home and called Burt before I could start thinking about what she meant by everything.
“Do you still need somebody for the Christmas overnight?”
He asked whether my plans had changed.
“They have.”
“You were marked unavailable.”
“Change it to AVAILABLE.”
He waited, and I could hear him moving his mouse.
I was fifty-six, and he’d never once asked me to explain why I wanted an extra shift.
He didn’t start then.
So the night before Christmas found me at an emergency coordination desk in Dayton, checking transport updates instead of waiting for a photograph of dinner.
I’d spent twenty-three years working airfield operations in the Air Force.
After leaving, I’d kept the parts of the work that required somebody to stay until the next person arrived.
The civilian badge changed less than my family thought it had.
A road closed, somebody needed a ride, another desk needed confirmation before sending people out.
I could answer those questions.
I kept my personal phone beside the roster anyway.
When it finally rang, I thought Elisa had found a reason to include me in something.
Instead, she was asking about the call to her father.
“They asked whether he’d seen you,” she said.
I stopped unscrewing my tea flask.
“When?”
“Just now. He thought somebody was messing with him.”
“What did he tell them?”
“That you weren’t here.”
My fingers stayed around the flask lid.
“Did he tell them where I was?”
“He said you were probably working.”
Probably.
She’d known exactly why.
“Then what?”
“They asked him to check whether he’d had any messages from you.”
I turned toward the other telephone beside the duty printer.
Its receiver was still in place.
Elisa said, “Mom, he kept asking what you’d done.”
“What did they say?”
“They told him, ‘DO NOT IGNORE THIS CALL.'”
She was crying harder now, and I pressed the phone closer so I wouldn’t miss anything.
“Did they give a name?”
“He didn’t write it down.”
I couldn’t see anything except that receiver and the cord beneath it.
“What else did they tell him, Elisa?”
“Your command had a call planned, Mom, and they needed YOU on the other end.”
The restricted telephone beside the printer began ringing before I could answer her.
The receiver beside the printer
“Sabrina? It’s Maura. We’re checking the numbers for the Christmas call.”
Maura had worked airfields with me before taking a job in the Defense Department’s coordination office. Our former unit was gathering a few old Christmas-shift people by telephone at one-fifteen, between duties overseas.
I put my personal phone facedown.
“Is everybody all right?”
“Everybody’s fine. Are you still joining us?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Your former husband hung up on the first attempt. Then he said the arrangements had changed.”
“They have.”
“We need a number that reaches you.”
I gave her my personal number. She read it back and corrected the family contact on her sheet.
That was what the ringing telephone wanted from me. A number. I could supply a number without consulting anyone’s new wife.
“Did you tell him to check his messages?” I said.
“He said he didn’t know where you were. We thought you might have sent him the change.”
My own phone lit up beneath my hand.
“Elisa thinks something’s happened.”
“Tell her it’s the Christmas connection. We tried your desk next because Burt said you were covering.”
The call had reached the restricted telephone through our duty switchboard. Maura would ring my mobile for the greetings. I thanked her and put the receiver down.
Then I answered Elisa.
“Nobody’s in trouble. It’s a holiday call with people I served with.”
Her father said something behind her.
“What?” I said.
“He wants to know whether they’re still calling here.”
“They’re calling me.”
A pause.
“Mom, could you come over?”
I held the phone away from my ear and looked at the screen. Same daughter. Same number.
“What changed?”
“Please. Dad says you need to be here when it happens.”
The chair in the hall
At twelve-twenty, Burt came beside my desk. I covered the microphone and gave him the transport answer I’d missed.
He pointed to my phone.
“Need your break early?”
“Maybe.”
“Tell me before you leave.”
He went back to the other desk. Elisa was still on the line, breathing through her mouth as she had beside the Christmas table.
I’d been due an hour away from the desk. I’d planned to spend it in my car, which tells you what a festive creature I’d become.
“Is Gwen there?” I said.
“She’s upstairs.”
“Does she know you’re asking me?”
“Mom, can you please just come?”
Four afternoons earlier, after Elisa said she wanted Christmas without me, Clint carried my chair into the hall. Gwen came down the stairs as he set it against the wall.
“You’re going?” she said.
“She’s got work,” Clint said.
I was fastening my coat. Gwen held the banister and said, “After what was said, I thought that might be best.”
I wanted to ask what she meant.
Then Elisa touched my sleeve.
“Please, Mom.”
I left with a button through the wrong hole and corrected it in the car.
Now Elisa wanted me back in the same room.
“The chair’s still in the hall, isn’t it?” I said.
“We can move it.”
Apparently my place in the family required no more than a little furniture handling.
Maura’s call had been arranged weeks before. Elisa had liked the idea of hearing people I’d worked with. Clint had offered his number because we’d all be at his house.
“I’ll handle the family end,” he’d said.
I’d let him. He could manage a telephone. I’d stayed married to him long enough to know which appliances were beyond him, and a telephone wasn’t one.
“Your dad knew about this,” I said.
“He says he forgot who was calling.”
“And you?”
“I thought it wouldn’t happen after you took the shift.”
“You never asked me.”
“I thought Dad did.”
Behind her, Clint said, “Just tell her we’ll put the chair back.”
Twelve twenty-five
At twelve-twenty-five, Clint took Elisa’s phone.
“Sabrina, let’s stop making this difficult.”
I nearly congratulated him. He’d managed six words before giving me an assignment.
“I’m at work.”
“Yes, well, Burt can spare you for a little while.”
“You don’t know what Burt can spare.”
“Elisa’s upset. You can hear that.”
I could. I could also hear him using her tears as if she’d handed him a tool.
“Give her the phone.”
“She wants her mother.”
“Four days ago you helped her tell me something different.”
He blew air into the receiver.
“We’re inviting you now.”
“Is Gwen inviting me?”
“It’s my house.”
That answered a question I hadn’t asked.
Burt passed behind my chair. I held up one finger. He nodded toward the roster, where my break still sat in its tidy box. Paper had no idea what people did to an hour.
“Clint, put Elisa back on.”
She came on before he could reply.
“Mom?”
“Come meet me here during my break. We’ll talk in the car.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“But Dad says the call should happen here. They have his number.”
“They have mine now.”
“He told them we’d be together.”
I pressed my palm against the desk. The edge had a chip that caught sleeves. I’d been meaning to report it for weeks. At that moment I wanted to pull the whole strip off.
“When did he tell them that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Elisa, do you want to see me?”
“Of course.”
“Then come.”
She didn’t answer.
I could’ve driven to her whenever she’d needed me. A flat tire. A bad day. A question about whether chicken smelled wrong. I’d gone over once because she said she couldn’t stop crying, and when I got there she was embarrassed because the immediate cause was a cupboard door.
I tightened the hinge. Then we talked about the actual cause.
Now ten minutes of road separated us, and she couldn’t cross it.
“Mom, if you come here, everyone can calm down.”
There it was again. My visit had a job.
“What would I be coming as?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your mother who’s wanted at Christmas, or somebody who can make this call go nicely?”
“That’s unfair.”
I nearly said I had enough unfairness available to compare.
Instead I told Burt I needed my break at twelve-thirty-five.
He checked the desk, then the roster.
“Back by one-thirty-five.”
“I will be.”
Elisa heard him.
“You’re coming?”
“I’m coming to talk.”
“Okay.”
“No promises about anything else.”
She hesitated, and I should’ve paid more attention to that.
Then she said, “I’ll tell Dad it’s sorted.”
The place beside the door
At twelve-forty-five, Elisa opened the door before I knocked.
She reached for my coat.
I kept it on.
The chair stood against the hall wall. Clint picked it up when he saw me, as if he’d been waiting for an audience before performing this great act of hospitality.
Gwen sat at the dining table with her hands around a mug.
“Hello, Sabrina.”
“Hello.”
Clint placed the chair at the corner nearest the door. There wasn’t room for anyone’s knees unless the person beside them surrendered a leg.
“There,” he said. “Now sit down.”
“I’ve got forty minutes here.”
“Then let’s not waste them.”
He could make a welcome sound like a dental appointment.
Elisa stood beside my chair.
“Do you want some tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“There’s food.”
“I came to talk.”
Clint pulled his chair out and sat.
“We’ve all had a long day. Some things were said badly. Elisa’s explained that.”
“What did she explain?”
“That you understood.”
My daughter rubbed her hands together.
I turned toward her.
“What did you tell him?”
“That you understood why we needed a quieter Christmas.”
“You asked whether I understood. I said I heard you.”
“I know, but you didn’t argue.”
The chair was behind my knees. I could’ve sat down then. Everyone would’ve had their proof that the evening could be repaired by getting me into the right position.
“You took my leaving as agreement?”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You could’ve called.”
“You were working.”
“I started work tonight. You had four days.”
She looked at her father.
He reached across the table and patted the place beside him.
“Come sit down, sweetheart.”
She went.
That hurt more than the chair.
I’d driven there expecting my daughter to meet me somewhere between the door and her father. Instead she sat beside him and made a space for herself by moving his plate.
Gwen put her mug down.
“Should I go upstairs?”
“No,” Clint said.
“I asked Sabrina.”
He looked at her.
I said, “I’d rather you stayed.”
Gwen stayed.
Elisa started crying again, and this time I let her find her own tissue. It took effort. I had one in my pocket. I could feel the folded edge against my fingers.
“Mom, I wanted one Christmas where nobody was uncomfortable.”
“And was it?”
“For a while.”
Clint said, “There. You see?”
Elisa’s head came up.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
But he’d taken it. The room had been comfortable while I was somewhere else. He held that sentence between us as if she’d won him a prize.
“Your mother understands,” he said.
“No,” I said.
He stopped.
“I understand that you both wanted me to leave. That’s what happened.”
Elisa pushed her tissue against her eyes.
“I thought you’d be all right. You always are.”
I wanted to tell her about sitting in my kitchen with the things she’d asked me to buy still in their bags. I wanted to make her see each bag.
Instead I asked the question I’d brought from my desk.
“Did you want me here before the phone rang?”
She looked at Clint before answering.
The stocking on the mantel
At twelve-fifty-five, Elisa still hadn’t answered.
Clint filled the space for her.
“Don’t put her through that. She’s invited you. You’re here. What else do you want?”
The stocking hung behind him. Its heel stuck out toward the room, exactly as Elisa had insisted it should.
I wanted to take it down. That was an ugly little want, and it was mine.
I’d brought it because she wanted something of our Christmases in this house. She’d kept the object and sent the person home.
“Elisa,” I said.
“I wanted you to help me get through this.”
“Through what?”
She pressed the tissue under her nose.
“Having everyone together.”
“But you didn’t have everyone together.”
Clint stood and went to the mantel. For a second I thought he might take the stocking down himself.
He adjusted its loop instead.
“This is what I mean,” he said. “We make an effort, and she picks it apart.”
Gwen looked from him to me.
“What effort?”
“Having her here now.”
“I drove here,” I said.
He turned around.
“After making Elisa beg.”
My daughter flinched at that word.
I would’ve liked to shout. I had enough in me to carry through the hall and out to the pavement. But every time I opened my mouth, Elisa reached for another tissue, and Clint got ready to point at her.
He’d found a convenient arrangement. He could say anything. I had to consider who might cry.
“The call’s at one-fifteen,” I said. “It doesn’t need to happen here.”
Clint took a step toward the table.
“You can’t have them calling the family and then tell them you’re off by yourself.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ll get the wrong idea.”
“Which idea?”
“That nobody cares where you are.”
Elisa started to speak, but he lifted a hand.
“Sabrina, I spent years being the one at home. Years. You went where they sent you. I dealt with the ordinary stuff. So if people want to say something nice about those Christmases, I think I can be included.”
There was the man I’d been married to. He could turn my being sent away into something I’d done to him, then demand a share of whatever came afterward.
I said, “Nobody’s handing out prizes.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did. I just wasn’t going to help him say it more attractively.
Elisa reached across the corner of the table for my hand.
“Couldn’t we do the call and talk about this afterward?”
“After I’ve helped everyone look happy?”
“Please, Mom.”
I pulled my hand back to undo my coat button. My throat hurt. I needed room around it.
For one stupid second she smiled. She thought I was taking the coat off.
I fastened it correctly instead.
“I won’t put the call on speaker.”
Clint dragged the spare chair away from the table.
“Fine. If that’s how you want it.”
Elisa didn’t stand.
That was the worst part. My daughter stayed in her seat while her father cleared my place for the second time.
I reached the doorway before Gwen spoke.
“I thought you didn’t want to spend Christmas with me.”
Gwen’s mug
At one o’clock, I turned back.
“What did you say?”
Gwen looked down at her mug, then pushed it away.
“That’s what I was told.”
Clint set the chair against the wall.
“Don’t start another argument.”
I stayed in the doorway.
“Gwen. What were you told?”
“That Elisa invited you, and you said you’d come if I wasn’t here.”
Elisa’s tissue dropped into her lap.
“No.”
Gwen looked at her.
“Your father said you were upset because she was making you choose.”
“I never said that,” I said.
Clint moved between Gwen’s chair and the doorway.
“That’s how it came across.”
“You weren’t there when she invited me.”
“We all knew this would be awkward.”
Gwen stood.
“What did Sabrina actually say?”
He looked at Elisa.
My daughter didn’t help him this time.
“You said Gwen needed me to ask Mom not to come,” Elisa said.
Gwen put both hands on the back of her chair.
“I didn’t ask that.”
“You said you wanted to feel at home,” Clint said.
“Here. With you. I didn’t ask you to remove somebody’s mother.”
He spread his hands.
“I was trying to keep everyone from getting hurt.”
I nearly laughed. It would’ve sounded terrible, and perhaps that was a shame.
Gwen came around the chair.
“That afternoon, when I came downstairs. You said she was leaving for work.”
“I got her out before there was a scene.”
“I wasn’t going to work,” I said. “I went home.”
Elisa covered her mouth.
Four afternoons earlier, she’d stopped me from asking Gwen what she meant. She’d wanted the conversation finished. So had I. We’d both left Clint’s words sitting where questions should’ve gone.
Gwen looked at me.
“I thought you were refusing to sit at my table.”
“I thought you wanted me out of it.”
Clint reached for her arm. She moved away.
“This has gotten ridiculous,” he said. “We were having a perfectly good Christmas before that phone call.”
I took my phone out of my pocket.
He looked at it.
“Who are you calling?”
“No one.”
I set it on the table, where all of them could see the time.
“We have fifteen minutes,” I said. “You can tell them what you did.”
The chair against the wall
Clint stayed standing at one end of the table.
“I’ve told you. I tried to make a difficult situation easier. Gwen’s new to all this. Elisa wanted the stocking and the old Christmas, and you know perfectly well how that makes somebody feel.”
Gwen said, “You could’ve asked me.”
“You would’ve said whatever sounded generous.”
“Try me.”
He looked away from her.
“Elisa, you said yourself it was easier without the tension.”
My daughter got up.
“I said it was quieter.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
He pointed toward me.
“Look at this. Your mother comes over, and within twenty minutes you’re all standing around accusing me.”
“I asked Gwen a question,” I said.
“Yes, and you knew what you were doing.”
I didn’t answer. He had a room full of people now, and nobody was finishing his sentences in a kinder way.
He pulled out his chair.
“Can we sit down?”
Gwen remained beside hers.
Elisa crossed to me.
“I asked you not to come,” she said. “I did that.”
Clint said, “Don’t start blaming yourself.”
She turned on him.
“Stop.”
He sat.
She looked back at me.
“I should’ve asked Gwen. I should’ve called you.”
“You should’ve wanted an answer.”
Her face folded. I hated saying it. I also knew she’d spent four days without asking me one question whose answer might inconvenience her.
“I did want you here,” she said.
“Then you let him move my chair.”
She cried openly then. I put my hand on her arm, but I didn’t tell her it was all right. I was finished issuing that particular receipt.
Clint leaned forward.
“Sabrina, you’ve made your point. What do you want me to say? That I didn’t handle it well? Fine. I didn’t handle it well.”
Gwen pulled her chair farther from his.
“Tell her what you told me.”
“I said she didn’t want to come.”
“Finish it.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“I said she didn’t want to come while you were here.”
“And was that true?”
He looked at me. I let him.
“No.”
Elisa wiped her face with her sleeve.
“And what you told me about Gwen?”
“She was having a hard time.”
“Did she ask you to keep Mom away?”
“No, but she shouldn’t have had to.”
Gwen pushed her chair in.
“You don’t get to add that.”
He stood again.
“Fine. No. She didn’t ask. I thought it would be easier if Sabrina wasn’t here. Happy?”
Nobody answered him.
There it was, in his own dining room, with the people he’d spoken for looking straight at him. He couldn’t carry that sentence out to the hall with my chair.
Elisa went to the mantel.
“Leave that,” he said.
She lifted the stocking off its hook.
“It’s mine.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
She checked the heel with her thumb. Then she brought it to me.
“Will you take this home?”
I didn’t reach for it immediately.
“Elisa.”
“I want it at your house.”
Clint came around the table.
“So now you’re leaving too? On Christmas? After everything we’ve done?”
“I’m going with Mom when she goes back.”
“To sit in a car?”
“If that’s where she can talk to me.”
I took the stocking. The felt had gone thin around the hanging loop. She’d been rubbing it for days.
Clint looked at Gwen.
“You’re going to let this happen?”
Gwen picked up his phone from beside his place and held it out to him.
“If you want to talk on Sabrina’s Christmas call, ask Sabrina.”
He didn’t take the phone.
“I thought this was supposed to include the family.”
I said, “You asked for Christmas without me.”
“I said one dinner.”
“You got it.”
His mouth opened, then shut.
Behind me, Elisa moved the chair away from the doorway. She set it beside the wall without waiting for him.
The way out was clear.
One-fifteen
At one-fifteen, my phone rang on the table.
All four of us looked at it. Clint reached first, out of habit or hope. I picked it up before his fingers touched the case.
“Hello, Maura.”
“There you are. Can you hear us?”
“I can.”
Two voices came through close together. People who’d once needed me to confirm a runway was ready were now arguing over who should say Merry Christmas first.
I laughed.
It came out wet. Elisa put her hand over her mouth and cried harder.
Maura said, “We’ve got a few minutes before people have to go back. Are your family there?”
“They’re here.”
Clint straightened.
I kept the phone at my ear.
“I’ll speak for myself tonight.”
“Of course.”
One of the voices said I still sounded as if I was checking a transport count. I said somebody had to, since apparently they were all talking at once.
Clint shifted beside the table.
He couldn’t hear their words. That bothered him more than I’d expected. He leaned closer, then stopped when I turned away.
Maura asked about my shift.
“I’m on break. I’m due back at one-thirty-five.”
“Some things don’t change.”
“Some do.”
I looked at Elisa. She was holding my sleeve, the same place she’d touched four afternoons earlier to keep me from asking another question.
This time she let go.
Someone on the call remembered the Christmas we’d all eaten breakfast at dinnertime. I remembered the eggs. They’d needed a permit to be described as food.
We laughed about that, too.
Nobody asked me to defend the years I’d worked. Nobody needed a list of what I’d missed to make the conversation fair. We had a few minutes, and we spent them talking to one another.
Then Maura said it was time for people to get back.
“Merry Christmas, Sabrina.”
“Merry Christmas.”
I ended the call myself.
Clint said, “You could’ve put it on speaker.”
“I could’ve.”
“I’d have liked to say hello.”
Gwen looked at him.
“You had her number in your hand when they rang.”
He sat down.
Elisa helped me settle the stocking inside my coat, where the loop wouldn’t catch on anything. Then she put her arms around me.
I held her. I cried into her shoulder, which was inconvenient because she’d chosen a cardigan that collected everything.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
I pressed my cheek against hers.
“Come outside with me.”
She went for her coat.
The crooked heel
At one-twenty-two, Gwen stood with me in the hall while Elisa found her bag.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said that afternoon,” Gwen said.
“You believed him.”
“I could’ve asked you.”
“Yes.”
She nodded. She didn’t ask for a hug, which improved my opinion of her considerably.
From the dining room, Clint said, “Are we really ending Christmas like this?”
Elisa came down the hall with her coat on.
“I’m leaving with Mom.”
“You were supposed to stay tomorrow.”
“I won’t be.”
“Because of one conversation?”
She pulled her bag onto her shoulder.
“Because I had four days to call her, and I didn’t.”
He came to the doorway.
“And I’m getting blamed for that too?”
“No,” she said. “That part’s mine.”
I loved her enough to let her carry it.
Clint turned toward Gwen.
“Will you at least come back and sit down?”
“In a minute.”
She stayed beside us while Elisa opened the front door.
The stocking’s heel poked out beneath my coat. I tucked it in, then left it crooked. Some workmanship didn’t need further attention.
I had my daughter’s stocking. I had her beside me, ready to spend the rest of my break talking instead of asking me to help her father look comfortable.
Clint put a hand on the doorframe.
“Sabrina. Next year we’ll do this properly.”
I looked at the chair he’d put in the hall.
“Don’t save me a place.”
I walked out with Elisa and the stocking against my chest.
If this one got to you, send it to somebody who has ever been asked to make Christmas easier by staying away.
Family tensions can turn a holiday upside down, as in “My Sister Turned My Nameplate Toward The Wall”. For more complicated family betrayals, read “My Mother Spent Her One Call Telling Me What To Say” and “My Twin Sister Cut Her Hair Like Mine in August”.
