It was Cherry and Tom’s job to make everything look festive. They’d bring over a big box of tablecloths and cloth napkins and vintage napkin rings. Tom would cover the kids’ table with kraft paper and draw an entire holiday scene, using the kids themselves as characters.
They loved it.
Honny always tried to save Tom’s holiday drawings, even though they’d be torn and covered in gravy by the end of the meal...
Cherry was tired.
She was having a hard time staying in the present.
Fortunately there was twice as much work as usual to keep her busy. And fortunately there were too many people buzzing around for anyone to home in too closely on Cherry.
Her family was loud—well, her sisters were loud. And their kids were loud. Their husbands tended to be mild-mannered, quiet guys who didn’t get too fussed about anything. They sat in the living room, not saying much to each other. Or they ran out to the car (or down to the basement, or out to the garage) to fetch things.
It had been a joke between her and Tom—that Cherry’s sisters had a type. Cherry’s sisterswerea type. They were variations on a theme.
Cherry was the quietest, but she wasn’t quiet. She was the most ambitious, but they were all ambitious in their own ways. They all looked enough alike that Cherry’s teachers would look at her on the first day of class and say,“Another Bonacci.”
Growing up, they’d looked like matryoshka dolls. One round girl after another, with pretty long hair and pretty pink cheeks. Everything about them overlapped.
The table was set. Cherry had remembered the box of Thanksgiving decorations. She was just fiddling with an antique cornucopia. (Tom loved a cornucopia...)
Faith brought a pitcher of water out to the table. “Should we wait for your friend to start dinner?”
“No,” Cherry said. “I don’t know when he’ll get here. And he’s having a late lunch.”
“He’s not going to eat?” Joy was bringing out the gravy boat. She looked shattered. “I made an extra pumpkin pie!”
Cherry took the gravy boat. “You made an extra pie for one person?”
“I didn’t want to not have enough.”
Honny set some rolls on the table. “It’s the same number of people, Joy. Minus Tom, plus this guy. No net gain.”
“Tom doesn’t like my pie.”
“He just doesn’t like pumpkin,” Cherry said. “It’s not personal.”
“Who doesn’t likepumpkin?” Honny made a face. “Good riddance.”
“Don’t talk about Tom like that,” Faith said.
They started dinner without Russ—and without Tom—though everyone made sure there was an empty seat next to Cherry.
The food was all good, and there was way too much of it. Every holiday meal with Cherry’s family was one long lament about how sad it was that you could only really have one bite of everything before you got too full.
Hope sat on the other side of the empty seat, and Cherry couldn’tstop herself from noticing what Hope put on her plate and how little of it she ate.
Cherry should mind her own business... (Her sisters would break down every bite Hope took on the group chat anyway.) But the point of holidays—the point of family—was to mind everyone’s business.
The conversation around the table got louder as the meal went on. Everyone talked over each other. They raced each other to punchlines. They laughed at the top of their voices.
By dessert, Cherry was laughing so much, she thought she might be crying off one of her eyelashes.
She had a mouth full of Joy’s pumpkin pie when she saw Russ standing at the end of the table.
His mouth was hanging open. He looked a little dazzled.Tharn.
Well... here it was, the final reveal.
