The wiper blades on my dented sedan were losing their battle against the Christmas Eve blizzard, scraping uselessly against the windshield as I drove through snow that seemed determined to bury Denver completely. My hands, raw and chapped from twelve-hour shifts at the Rusty Lantern Grill, gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles ached. Every instinct I’d developed over twenty-eight years of subtle rejection screamed at me to turn around, to drive back to my cramped Eastfield apartment and forget about family obligation.
But I kept going because two days earlier, my eighty-two-year-old grandfather Arthur had called with a voice thinner than paper and asked me to sit beside him one more Christmas. I couldn’t say no to him, even though it meant returning to a house that had never felt like home. The iron gates of my parents’ estate loomed out of the white curtain of snow, the mansion beyond glowing golden against the storm.
This was the kingdom of Graham and Vivien Hail—my father, CEO of Hail Horizon Properties, and my mother, who ran what she called the “hospitality division” but what everyone else recognized as an endless series of expensive parties designed to polish the family image. I was the disappointing daughter, the one who’d chosen to be a line cook instead of something impressive, who’d married into a working-class family before divorcing, who lived in a building with a view of dumpsters and smelled perpetually of fryer grease. The black dress I wore tonight came from a thrift store and fit poorly.
My shoes were the non-slip ones from work because I couldn’t afford heels that didn’t feel like torture devices. I found Grandpa Arthur exactly where I expected him—tucked in a corner of the dining room, far from the fireplace’s warmth, sitting in a wheelchair that looked as ancient as he did. He wore a moth-eaten cardigan over a plaid shirt, looking small and apologetic for taking up space.
But when he saw me, his cloudy eyes cleared and a smile broke across his weathered face. “Phee,” he rasped, reaching for my hand with fingers that felt paper-thin and cold. “You came.” I knelt beside him, ignoring my mother’s disapproving stare from across the room.
“I promised, didn’t I?”
For the first hour, we were ghosts at a party thrown by and for people who’d perfected the art of looking through us. My father held court near the fireplace, his silver hair immaculate, his laugh too loud for jokes that weren’t funny. My mother drifted between guests like a shark in silk, ensuring every glass stayed full and every important person stayed impressed.
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