The weekend arrived faster than I wanted.
I stood in my room with the bag half-packed and felt the familiar tightness in my chest. Willa’s seventieth. The reading of my grandfather’s will. A full weekend surrounded by my mother’s people. I didn’t get along with them on a normal day. Spending two nights under the same roof felt worse. Jolie used to come with me whenever these gatherings happened. She knew how to stand between me and the worst of it. Now she was across an ocean at another college, and I was doing this alone.
They hadn’t come to my father’s funeral. Not one of them. Willa hadn’t even sent a message. My mother still called them family. I zipped the bag harder than necessary. For a second the old memory cut through—my father’s assistant telling him Julian’s company had played
