She ignored her and aimed a loving missile directly at me. “We expect you for Easter dinner tomorrow.”
My brain hiccupped.
“…what?”
“Easter,” she repeated. “Tomorrow. You live here now, so of course you’re joining us. We eat at three.”
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
She continued cheerfully. “Just bring yourself. And an appetite. And maybe a jacket—Beck insists on grilling even when it’s cold. But we’ll have ham, red potatoes, all the good stuff.”
“ I-I don’t…” My chest tightened. Not painfully. Just sharply, in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. “I don’t really do… holidays.”
My voice faltered because I used to.
I used to love Easter.
When my parents were alive.
My mom would make cinnamon rolls in the morning. My dad would hide eggs even though we weretoo old for itbecause he said tradition mattered. My brother and I would pretend not to care, then spend half an hour competing over who found the most.
But after they died, after I spent the first Easter without them, trying to hold my brother together, trying to pretend I wasn’t falling apart, I just… stopped.
By the time my brother built his own family, Easter belonged to them. And I never wanted to intrude. Never wanted to sit at someone else’s table and feel how empty my own was.
Family holidays were a wound I didn’t poke.
Sienna’s mom didn’t know any of that. She just patted my arm warmly. “Three o’clock. Don’t be late.”
Sienna made a noise like she was swallowing a live squirrel. “Mom!”
But the woman was already marching back inside, mission accomplished.
The door closed behind her.
Silence fell.
Sienna slowly set down her sponge. “You… don’t have to come.”
Her voice had a strange tremor of half-embarrassment, half-dread.
I exhaled, rubbing the back of my neck. “I figured.”
“They’re just…my family’s like that. They adopt everyone. You don’t owe them anything.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not! You looked like you’d seen a ghost!”
Well.
Close.
Just a ghost of my old life.
“Sienna,” I said, gentler this time, “I’m okay.”
