“They’re in town, staying with friends,” she goes on. “Coming over here tomorrow.”
I jump up, my knee hitting the coffee table and sloshing cocoa onto the tray. “No.I’m not doing this.”
“Sit down, honey.Stop.Let’s talk.”
“I’ll go right to the airport and back to London,” I threaten. “You can’t make me do this!”
“Please. Sit.Down,” she orders, more sternly than I’m used to.
I lower to the sofa, eyes burning with suppressed tears.
“I’m going to let them explain to you where they’ve been, and why,” Minnie says soberly. “It’s not my story to tell—they always made me promise not to talk about it. And believe me, Natty…it wasn’t easy on me. When you stopped asking, a few years after they left, well… I didn’t know if that was a relief or just plain tragic. I didn’t agree with their reasoning for hiding what happened, but I kept my word. It was a joy to raise you, so…” She stares into herlap for a moment. “Maybe my selfishness was part of it.” Her eyes are intense when she looks up. “Their foolishness was my gain. I gotyou.”
The emotion I see on her face is intimidating, so I can’t help making a dismissive joke about my parents, holding on to my resentment like a point of reference in a dark room. “Yeah, okay, what was it?” I ask with a sneer. “Is this some cheesy movie where ‘mommy and daddy went on the run to escape the mob’?”
“They made big mistakes, and they know it. There isn’t going to be a heroic plot twist. But you have some changes coming—”
“Forget it,” I interrupt. “No thanks. They can’t pop up twenty-eight years later and expect to be a family.” I lean in, emphasizing. “They… are… strangers.I don’t know them, and I don’t want to.”
Minnie’s icy-blue gaze sears into mine. “You know I rarely insist on things, butI’m insisting. Hear them out. I raised you with manners. If I can be strong, so can you.”
I sag back with both hands over my face, suffocating under a combination of guilt and fear and fury.
Minnie pulls me into a hug. “Oh, Natty,” she sighs, rocking me. “Do you think I want to give up my status after all these years and say, ‘There ya go—I raised your little girl. Now you can have her back’? I’m scared shitless. And I know you’re angry. It’s justified.”
“I hate them so much right now,” I mutter savagely, “and I don’t think I’veeveractually hated them. I was sad and confused for years; then I just didn’t feel anything, but… this is the first time I’ve hated them, and it’sso much. I don’t know where to put it.”
“It’s time you stopped putting your anger someplace and started letting yourself look at it. You’ve got some unresolved stuff, kiddo.It’s not an accident that you always lose your heart to unavailable older men. You gravitate toward people who are bound to disappoint you, and men are just… well, the handiest candidates in that department.”
I can see that my aunt is really upset. She’s desperate for me to be okay with all this. I have to look like I’m swimming, smiling and waving to her as she watches from the shore while I’m actually drowning. Making people feel okay, putting their needs before my own, it’s what I do. But inside, I’m furious.
I was such an easy child, because I started my life with Minnie as a respectful guest, and even when it became apparent that the arrangement was permanent, I worked hard to be no trouble: clean room, good grades, no high school summer keggers by the river, no messing with boys in back seats.
I was the only witness to my quiet heartache, which leaked privately out of the well-hidden cracks in my sense of control. I could exert the discipline never to talk with Minnie about my grief over my parents’ absence—it would have felt ungrateful, so I was careful to prove at all times that I was a responsible and sunshiny Good Girl—but I couldn’t choose what I dreamt… and Ididdream of my parents often.
What do you do when you find out that the characters who inhabit your dream world are about to “come to life”?
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 theWhat do you have to say for yourself?energy of a school principal.
“Merry Christmas, baby,” Sherri ventures in a hopeful voice.
