Around them: Raymond’s adult son Trevor, Trevor’s wife Kayla, Denise’s sister Marjorie, and Leah, twenty-six, seated midway down the table like an afterthought in her own family.
She had come because her mother begged her. “Please,” Denise had said over the phone. “Just one normal evening. I want us to feel like a family.”
Leah had known better. She had agreed anyway, because she was still at the age where knowing better doesn’t always override the hope that this time might be different. She was also, if she was honest with herself, not entirely immune to the specific longing that comes from watching your mother build something new and wanting — even at twenty-six, even with years of evidence suggesting otherwise — to believe it might include you.
It was not different.