Only two people didn’t raise theirs: Uncle Silas and Aunt Lillian, his wife. They sat there stiff-backed, hands in their laps, looking like the only ones in the room who remembered what Christmas was supposed to be.
My chest felt hollow enough to echo.
I had come to my grandfather’s house because he had called me himself a week earlier and asked me to bring Ivy and Hazel for dinner. His voice on the phone had sounded warm, almost relieved, like he had been waiting for this. He told me he missed Hazel. He told me he wanted to see all of us. He told me seven o’clock.
I’d driven here believing—like an idiot, like a man who never learns—that this time might be different.
Now the room was voting on whether I deserved to remain in it.
I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could force any words past my throat, my uncle Silas stood up so quickly his chair scraped loudly across the hardwood.
“That’s enough,” he said, voice sharp, shaking with fury. “It’s Christmas. For God’s sake.”
For one brief second, I felt something like relief. Like someone had reached into the water and grabbed my wrist when I was sinking.
But the storm didn’t stop. It just shifted.
Heavy footsteps sounded from the hallway, slow and measured. Grandpa Everett entered the room with the same calm authority he’d always carried—straight posture, gray hair neatly combed, eyes that missed nothing even at seventy-eight. He scanned the raised hands like he was taking attendance.
Silas turned toward him, chest heaving.
“Dad,” Silas said. “You can’t be serious.”
Grandpa didn’t look at Silas at first. He looked at the room. Then, in a tone so flat it felt like a slap, he said, “They’re right.”
The words hit me like something thrown.
For a moment, the air left my lungs. Ivy’s hand found mine and squeezed so hard it hurt. Hazel’s drawing crinkled in the gift bag as she clutched it tighter.
Grandpa’s gaze finally landed on me. There was something in his eyes that wasn’t cruelty. It wasn’t approval either. It was… complicated. Like he was holding something back. Like he was watching for something.
Then he looked away again, back to the room, and said, “We’ll take a vote.”
My brain stuttered. I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to.
“If you want Nolan out of this party,” Grandpa said, voice rising, “raise your hand.”
The hands shot up. Thirty of them. A forest of judgment.
Only two stayed down.