Chapter 6
Chapter 6 - The Feast of the ReclaimedOne year later. Christmas Eve returned to New Jersey exactly as it always does—gray, spitting snow, with the smell of woodsmoke hanging low over the suburban chimneys.My small brick house was packed to the gills. The kitchen table was buried under platters of food: homemade tamales wrapped in corn husks, a massive pot of hot cider with cinnamon sticks floating on top, and three plates of cookies Ethan and I had spent the previous evening baking.
Ethan was sitting on the living room sofa, wearing the boots I bought him the previous year. They were broken in now, scuffed at the toes from his walks across campus. He had a notebook in his lap, studying for a winter session class, but he wasn't tense. His shoulders were dropped, his legs crossed comfortably over the arm of the chair.
The front doorbell rang.
Ethan didn't flinch. He didn't look at me for permission. He simply stood up, walked to the door, and opened it.
Mark was standing on the porch, a small box of bakery pastries in his hand. He looked cold, his breath pluming in the evening air, but he didn't try to push his way in. He stood on the mat, waiting.
"Hey, Dad," Ethan said.
"Hey, Ethan. I brought those cannolis from the place downtown. The ones your mom used to like."
Ethan looked at the box, then looked at his father's face. "Come inside. It’s freezing out there."
Mark stepped into the warm hallway, the smell of garlic and pine greeting him. He took off his coat and hung it on the peg—the same peg where Ethan’s old backpack had hung when we first arrived a year ago.
The Table Where No One LeftWe sat down to eat at seven. The kitchen was small, our chairs bumping against the refrigerator and the counter, but nobody complained about the lack of space.
On the sideboard, right next to the breadbasket, sat the framed photograph of Emily laughing into the wind at the beach. She wasn't hidden away in a closet anymore; she was part of the room, her presence as natural as the creak in the floorboards.
"Marcus is coming down for New Year’s," Ethan mentioned between bites of a tamale. "His parents are going to Atlantic City, and he didn't want to stay in the dorms alone. I told him we had room."
"Of course we do," I said. "We can set up the cot in the study."
Mark looked up from his plate, his eyes wet but his smile genuine. "I can bring over that air mattress I have at the apartment if you need more room, Ethan. It's one of those double-high ones."
"Thanks, Dad," Ethan said. "That’d be good."
It wasn't a perfect reconciliation. The years Claudia had spent carving away at their relationship couldn't be repaired by a single dinner or a shared box of cannolis. There were still moments when Mark would say something slightly too careful, or when Ethan would withdraw into himself for an hour without explanation. But the foundation was dry now. The rot had been cleared out.
Near midnight, after Mark had driven back to his apartment and the dishes were stacked in the sink, Ethan and I stood on the back porch, watching the snow settle on the small patch of grass behind the garage.
"You think about that night?" Ethan asked quietly, his hands tucked into the pockets of his new winter coat.
"Every day," I said.
"I used to think that if I just behaved better, if I didn't make noise, she would like me," he said, staring at his own breath in the dark. "I spent seven years trying to solve a puzzle that didn't have any pieces."
"Some people don't want a family, Ethan," I told him, putting my arm around his shoulders. "They want a theater company where they get to play the lead. When you don't follow their script, they throw you out of the theater."
May you like
He leaned into my side, his weight solid and warm against my old frame. "I like this house better anyway," he whispered. "The stairs creak, but the doors stay open."
We went back inside, locking the door behind us against the New Jersey frost. The music was playing softly from the old radio on the counter, the candles were flickering out in the windows, and for the first time in a very long time, every single person who belonged in our family was safe inside the heat.
