Then Linda ordered takeout and got everything I liked: burgers, fries, milkshakes, chicken sandwiches, mozzarella sticks, pie, fruit, and enough leftovers to get me through both heartbreak and the apocalypse.
She handed me a plate and said, “Eat!”
Brandon unlocked the pantry while his cousins watched and made extremely unhelpful comments about his future as a cautionary tale at every holiday.
One cousin said, “We’re calling this the Great Refrigerator Incident forever!”
Grandpa laughed. “Good!”
Linda put the combination lock in her purse and looked at Brandon. “If you ever do anything ridiculous like this again, I will invent consequences so humiliating you will not recover from them.”
No one doubted her.
“We’re calling this the Great Refrigerator Incident forever!”
That evening, after everyone had left and the house became quiet, Brandon came into the nursery while I was changing Sophie.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Not the kind I said outside because my whole family was watching. A real one.”
I kept buttoning Sophie’s pajamas.
He continued. “After she was born, I became obsessed with fixing everything quickly. Your body, the sleep schedule… everything. I turned you into a problem to manage instead of seeing what you had done.”
“I don’t forgive you today,” I answered.
“I know.”