Chapter 2
For a moment, I could hear only the chairs scraping across my dining room floor.
I pressed the phone closer to my ear.
"What exactly did Daniel tell you?"
Dad hesitated before answering.
"He said being in the house would be too painful for you. He asked me not to keep inviting you."
Through the kitchen doorway, Daniel was guiding one end of the extension table past the wall.
Yesterday, he had stood beside me while I chose Dad's coffee.
He'd even picked up a second bag for the week.
All that time, he had already known we weren't coming.
"I'm sorry," Dad said.
"I should have called."
"You thought you were doing what I wanted."
The unopened coffee sat inside my suitcase.
Dad had prepared an empty Christmas for himself because my husband had spoken in my name.
"I'll call you later," I said.
"Please don't make other plans yet."
After we hung up, I opened the airline app.
Two tickets still waited under our names.
Daniel hadn't canceled them.
He had built a different Christmas around them.
A worker carried another stack of chairs past me.
"Daniel."
He glanced up from the delivery form.
"Give me one minute."
"No. Now."
The worker slowed.
Daniel set down the clipboard and followed me into the kitchen, pulling the door almost closed.
"What did you tell my father?"
"I said this year might be difficult for you."
"You told him I didn't want to come home."
"I was trying to make things easier. Your dad understood."
My phone still showed Dad's name on the counter.
Daniel reached toward it, then stopped before touching it.
"You watched me pack," I said.
"Yesterday, you helped me buy his coffee."
"I hadn't found the right time to explain."
"The table was ordered a week ago."
Someone knocked on the kitchen door.
A worker needed Daniel to approve the table's position.
He called back that he would be there shortly, but his eyes had already shifted toward the dining room.
"Mom invited everyone," he said.
"Megan has the kids, Linda changed her travel plans, and Adam is coming for the first time. I couldn't disappoint all of them."
"So you disappointed Dad instead."
"He's more independent. He can handle one quiet Christmas."
I picked up the printed flight confirmation beside my purse.
Seven days with Dad.
That was what Daniel and I had agreed to in October.
"Whether I can handle being in Mom's house is my decision," I said.
"You don't get to use my grief to refuse my father for me."
Daniel rubbed his thumb over his wedding band.
"I knew going back would upset you."
"So you protected me by lying to me?"
His hand fell to his side.
Last Christmas, Mom had asked us to come two days early.
Daniel's mother needed help with dinner, so we arrived on December twenty-seventh instead.
Mom had hugged me at the door and said it didn't matter.
Six months later, she was gone.
"We missed last Christmas with her too," I said.
"We didn't know it would be the last."
A worker unfolded a chair in the dining room.
Its metal legs struck the floor with a sharp click.
"But you know this is Dad's first without her."
Daniel exhaled and opened the kitchen door.
Beyond him, sixteen empty places waited around a table I had never agreed to fill.
"Why does every holiday have to become a choice between my family and you?"
I looked at the red stocking resting inside my open suitcase.
His family.
And me.