“Youtry it with the mayo,” she snaps. “I don’t see it on yours.” Her head tilts. “Wait a minute. Grandma Donna, Tully needs some of that.”
“Oh dear, I didn’t realize it hadn’t gotten to you yet,” Grandma Donna says, reaching over to give Tully a huge helping.
He scowls at Goldie.
I choke back a laugh and then can’t hold it in. Our grandmas turn, smiling to see what’s so funny.
“Tully made a funny face,” I say weakly to Grandma Donna.
Tully gives me the finger when Grandma Donna isn’t looking, but Dad sees.
“Maybe some of usarestill three-and-a-half years old,” he says under his breath.
“Here, I need some, Grandma Donna,” Goldie’s fiancé Milo says, holding up his plate.
We all turn to him, mouths gaping.
“Kiss ass.” Tully coughs in his fist.
Grandma Donna puts a pile on his plate, and he takes his fork and gets a huge clump of it on there. He pales when she adds the mayo at the last second, but then he gives us a defiant look as he puts it in his mouth.
“Mmm,” he says.
He then proceeds to gag and then tries to cover it up, hitting his fist on his chest.
“Took too big of a bite,” he says weakly.
“That’s my man,” Goldie says as she tries not to cackle.
Over all the laughing and chatter, Kevin decides to jump into the conversation. He hops onto his little stool beside the table and yips three times.
“Show them, Kevin,” Goldie says.
“Who’s the best dog in the whole world?” Dad asks.
Kevin spins in a circle, sits, then holds one paw in the air.
We all cheer, and it’s so loud, it scares him. He runs under the table between Dad’s and Goldie’s feet.
After dinner, I make mulled wine for everyone, and we play a game of gin rummy. The warmth of the brandy in my chest, mixed with the warm fuzzies of being near my family again, leaves me feeling happier than I’ve been in a long time. I was content in Colorado, happy even, but I missed my family more than I thought possible. It feels right to be back.
I’m about to leave to check on the restaurant when headlights sweep across the driveway. Goldie hops up before the doorbell rings so it doesn’t set Kevin off and then walks back with Ava.
She pauses just behind Goldie, holding a pie. Since discovering we have a sister we didn’t know about, we’ve had a lot of awkward and emotional moments. Our mother had Ava when she was a teenager in high school, and her boyfriend at the time, Bruce Granger, whose family has a long-standing hatred of my dad’s family, wanted her to have an abortion. She went away for a while instead, letting him think she’d had an abortion, but she’d given the baby up for adoption. When she started dating my dad and they got serious, she let him know about the baby.
Ava didn’t know about us right away either, since it was a closed adoption, but with 23andMe, she was able to find her birth dad. She had no idea she had so many siblings, and I can’t imagine how that must have felt to go from being an only child to having a huge family. When she came to town, she was so resentful that we’d had a great life and she hadn’t that she wreaked havoc at first. She also had Bruce in her ear, bad-mouthing us, but his true colors showed early on. Once my dad realized who she was, and we found out she existed, Dad told us that our mom had never gotten over giving her baby up.
It breaks our hearts knowing Mom dealt with that secret for all those years and never got to meet Ava before she died.
As for Ava, she’s trying hard to make up for our rough start, and every time she shows up, she brings something—flowers, a cake, or her favorite coffee beans. And we’re all trying to make her feel welcome and comfortable, but we’re still getting to know each other, so it’s not going to be seamless right away.
“Hey,” she says, her voice quiet but steady.
Everyone says hello.
It’s jarring how much she looks like Mom. I don’t know how we didn’t all know she was related immediately.
“I heard you like banana cream pie,” she says to Dad.
