We found seats on an early Thanksgiving morning flight from Columbus to Tampa, with a return on Sunday. The holiday fares made me pause, but we could afford the trip. Retirement had not made us wealthy. It had made us careful.
I looked at the total, then at Karen.
She was already reaching for her wallet.
“Use the travel card,” I said.
Afterward, she sat at the table and composed a message to both Derek and Melissa.
She read it to me before sending it.
We’ve decided to spend Thanksgiving with Pat in Florida. We leave Thursday morning and return Sunday. I won’t be cooking or bringing dishes this year. Please make other arrangements for the dinner.
“Clear enough?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She pressed send.
Derek called ten minutes later.
Karen put him on speaker and set the phone between us.
“Mom, are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Because of dinner?”
“Because I told you what I could manage, and neither of you accepted it.”
“We said we’d help.”
“You haven’t assigned anyone anything, Derek.”
A cupboard closed on his end.
“We’ve already invited everybody.”
“You still have time to change the menu or ask people to bring food.”
He was quiet.
Then he said, “Let me talk to Mel.”
“Please do. But we’re going to Florida.”
After the call, Melissa sent a separate message.
I wish you’d told us before we planned everything around you.
Karen showed it to me.
She answered, I offered to bring something. I never agreed to cook the dinner.
Melissa didn’t reply.
For a day, neither did Derek.
That silence troubled Karen more than any argument would have.
She kept her phone near her while she folded laundry. When it lit up with an advertisement from a department store, she picked it up too quickly, then put it down.
“Call him if you want,” I said.
“And say what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.”
Eight days before Thanksgiving, Melissa sent another message about rolls.
Still homemade, please. Store-bought always tastes like cardboard lol.
Karen stared at it.
Then she typed, Melissa, I’m not making rolls. We are going to Florida, as I told you and Derek on Sunday.
This time, the response came as a phone call.
Karen answered in the kitchen. I was at the table paying the electric bill, close enough to hear her side.
“No, I’m not angry that you’re hosting.”
A pause.
“I didn’t ask you to cancel.”
Another pause, longer.
“Then you need to tell the guests what to bring.”
Karen walked to the window.
When she spoke again, her voice had lost its apologetic edge.
“I understand you want it to be nice. That doesn’t mean I have to do it.”
After she hung up, she told me that Greg Whitman and his wife, Sandra, were coming.
Greg was Derek’s supervisor.
Two other couples from the firm were invited, too.
I knew Greg’s name. I had met him once at a company picnic, where he and Derek spent most of a hamburger discussing a drainage problem on a project neither could leave alone.
“I thought this was the family,” I said.
“It is. And friends. And people from work.”
“Does Derek want all those people there?”
“He agreed to invite them.”
Karen leaned against the counter.
“Melissa said she’d already told Sandra I make everything from scratch.”
There it was.
Not a conspiracy. Nothing grand enough to deserve the word.
Melissa had described a holiday she wanted to host and assigned Karen the work necessary to produce it.
Derek had let her.
I asked whether Karen wanted me to speak to him.
She thought about it.
“Tell him what you think,” she said. “Just don’t turn it into you defending me while I stand behind you.”
“I won’t.”
“And don’t offer to come over and help them instead.”