“I can help.”
“With what?”
“Whatever you need.”
“That means I still have to decide, organize, explain, and ask.”
Kevin stared at the table. Tiffany folded her arms.
“She likes doing these things,” Tiffany told him.
Margaret felt the old urge to soften the room, to make a joke, to rescue everyone from hearing what had just been said.
She let the urge pass.
“Ask me.”
Tiffany blinked.
“Ask whether I like being told I’ll serve your family.”
Kevin pulled out a chair but didn’t sit.
“Did you ask her before you invited everyone?”
“I thought we were family.”
“That isn’t an answer,” he said.
For the first time that morning, Tiffany looked uncertain. Then she turned toward Margaret.
“Some of them have arranged time off. My aunt is driving four hours.”
Margaret imagined strangers arriving with gifts, unaware of the argument waiting behind the front door. Their embarrassment would be real. So would Tiffany’s relief if Margaret surrendered now.
She picked up her phone.
“I’m telling you both in writing, so nobody can misunderstand. I am not hosting Christmas. My house is not available.”
She typed slowly and sent the message to both of them.
Kevin’s phone vibrated.
Tiffany looked down at hers.
“You really need to make it this formal?”
“Yes,” Margaret said. “Apparently I do.”
That afternoon, after they left, Margaret sat in Daniel’s old chair with her coat still on.
She had put it on to leave the house and then found she had nowhere particular to go.
The rooms were painfully quiet. She pictured Kevin returning to an apartment full of anger and blaming her for it. She nearly called him.
Instead, she called Ruth, who had lived two doors down for eighteen years.
“Would you like to get lunch?”
Ruth paused.
“Right now?”
“If you’re free.”
“I can be ready in ten minutes.”
At the diner, Margaret talked about the weather until Ruth put down her menu.
“What happened?”
Margaret told her, staring at the little silver container of sugar packets.
When she finished, Ruth didn’t congratulate her or call Tiffany names.
She asked, “What would you like Christmas to look like?”
Margaret realized she had prepared answers to every possible accusation except that question.
