Chapter 1
The ham sat in the middle of my parents' dining table under the brass chandelier, glazed and steaming on its white oval platter with lettuce tucked around the edges, and David was smiling while he carved it. That was the contradiction I couldn't get past. The table was set for Christmas, the wine was poured, the tree glowed through the doorway in the living room, and I was sitting at the head of the table holding a single white sheet of paper with both hands like it might keep me steady. I had ironed my dark green dress that afternoon, the one with the little gold buttons down the front, and I had put the letter in a folder so it wouldn't crease on the drive from Columbus. David's knife moved smooth through the meat and everyone watched him do it.
My name is Lauren Hayes, I was thirty-four, and that night I was trying to tell my family I got in.
It was just after six on Christmas evening. The plates were white with a thin gold rim and my mother had put little folded napkins beside each one. Tyler was on the far left with his phone lit blue in his hand and Ryan was on the right holding his phone to his ear, and Megan, my sister-in-law, sat with her dark hair in a low bun and her black top catching the lamplight. I had waited through grace. I had waited while the potatoes were passed. I had the letter flat between my fingers and I could feel the paper warm from my palms. I lifted my eyes from the page toward David because he was the one who always said when it was okay to speak. I cleared my throat and said I had something I wanted to read, that I had gotten a letter that morning. I started to unfold my hands a little, to lift the page so they could see it wasn't a bill or a flyer.
David didn't put the knife down. He turned his head toward me with his mouth slightly open the way he did right before he corrected me, and then he raised his left hand, palm out, still holding the fork with the meat pinned underneath. It wasn't a violent gesture. It was worse. It was casual, practiced, the same open-palm pause he used when I was sixteen and tried to explain why I wanted to apply to art school. Megan's hand, which had been open toward me, dropped to her lap and she looked down at her plate. Tyler didn't look up from his screen. Ryan murmured something into his phone. The ambience was just the chandelier humming and the scrape of a chair leg and the low room tone you get when no one wants to be the first to make a sound.
I felt the first doubt slide in cold. Maybe I had misread the timing. Maybe I should have waited until dessert. I heard David say, "Hold on a sec, Lauren," and I hated how small my name sounded when he said it that way. Megan gave a quick, thin smile that didn't reach her eyes and said, "Honey, let's just eat first?" I didn't answer right away. I looked at the letter. The paper was still white and clean and it had my name printed at the top in plain black ink, and for a second I wanted to fold it up and put it back in my bag and pretend I had never brought it. "Please just let me read it," I said, and my voice was quieter than I meant it to be.
May you like
I didn't read it, though. I pulled it against my chest instead. I brought both hands up and pressed the page flat to the front of my green dress with my right hand spread over it, holding it there like I needed to keep it from being taken. My eyes widened before I could stop them and I looked off to the right, past David's shoulder toward the doorway where the Christmas tree lights kept blinking. Then I closed them for a beat, just a slow blink that felt like trying not to cry in front of everyone. David stayed poised over the ham with the knife hovering, watching me. The potatoes and the wine glasses stayed sharp in the foreground and nobody reached for anything. I could hear my own breathing.
The silence stretched and the kitchen door behind me, the one that led to where my mother had been warming rolls, started to shift on its hinges as if someone was about to push it open.
