Chapter 8: A Meal Without a Performance
The first holidays required lists.
Who would be where. How long. Whether gifts would be exchanged under old assumptions. I hosted a brief afternoon and did not host the evening. Diane and Lucas attended the afternoon, stayed inside the time we had named, and left without a scene. My sister said it looked almost normal. I said normal was not the goal. Predictable and non-false was enough.
In January, a mutual acquaintance tried to recruit me into outrage at a dinner party, fishing for details about “what really happened at the ceremony.” I declined the role. Outrage can be a sport. I was done providing the field. Lucas, for his part, stopped asking me to endorse the marriage in language I did not mean. That single restraint did more for our phone calls than any speech about love.
