Thanksgiving Truths
Thanksgiving night smelled like rosemary and warm bread, the kind of smell that’s supposed to mean family. My daughter, Chloe, and I cooked all afternoon in our small kitchen—just the two of us—because I still believed in the ritual. I believed that if you kept setting the table, eventually people would show up and act like they cared.
Chloe mashed potatoes with serious concentration, her dark hair falling forward as she worked the masher with determined strokes.
I basted the turkey and pretended the tightness in my chest was just stress, not disappointment waiting to happen. The kitchen was warm, almost too warm, and the windows had fogged up from all the cooking.
Outside, the November sky had turned that deep blue-gray that comes just before full darkness. At 6:05 p.m., my phone buzzed on the counter.
My sister, Lauren: I’m sick, so I’m sitting this one out.
I stared at the message for a long second, my thumb hovering over the screen. Lauren had been “sick” for birthdays. “Sick” for graduations.
“Sick” whenever she didn’t feel like being around me unless she needed something—money to borrow, someone to watch her kids, a shoulder to cry on when her life fell apart.
But when things were good? When she wanted to celebrate?
I was invisible. Chloe watched my face from across the kitchen island.
“Aunt Lauren isn’t coming?” she asked quietly.
“Looks like it,” I said, forcing a smile that didn’t belong to me, the kind of smile I’d perfected over years of pretending everything was fine. I texted back something polite—Feel better. We’ll save you a plate.—because I had spent most of my life swallowing the obvious truth to keep the peace.
My thumbs moved automatically, typing words I didn’t mean, offering kindness to someone who had never returned it.
We sat down at the table anyway. Two plates.
Two glasses. The extra chairs pushed in like they were embarrassed to be empty.
The turkey sat in the center, golden and perfect, surrounded by dishes we’d spent hours preparing.
Green bean casserole. Cranberry sauce. Sweet potato pie.
Enough food for eight people, made by two.
I tried to make it normal. I asked Chloe about school.
I laughed at a joke she made about her history teacher. But the silence around us was loud, and every few minutes my eyes drifted to my phone, waiting for my parents to text, to call, to say they were running late but on their way.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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