The family reunion is chaos.
Fifty people crammed into Aunt Margaret’s house, all talking at once, kids screaming, someone’s new boyfriend trying too hard to impress, Grandma asking when I’m getting married for the third time in an hour.
I last forty-five minutes before I steal a bottle of wine from the kitchen and escape to the basement.
The stairs creak under my feet. The noise fades as I descend into the cool, dim space below. It’s quieter here – just the muffled thump of footsteps overhead, the distant roar of conversation.
I don’t expect anyone else to be here.
But there they are.
My step-uncle Marcus – Aunt Carol’s second husband, no blood relation to anyone upstairs – sprawled on the old leather couch with a whiskey glass. Forty-two, silver-streaked hair, the kind of jaw that
