Chapter 2 - THE SILENT NIGHT
“Mom, it’s two days before Christmas,” Meredith’s voice quavered over the phone, thick with panic and disbelief.
“And you have forty-eight hours to figure it out,” I replied smoothly. “I believe in you, Meredith.”
I hung up before she could formulate another plea.
On Christmas Eve, my house was eerie in its quietness. For the first time in over a decade, my oven was off. There were no six-hour roasting timers ticking, no fifty-pound bags of ice melting in the bathtub, no mountain of gift wrap suffocating the recycling bin. I turned on my single box of white candles, poured a glass of cabernet, and watched the snowfall outside my window.
My phone hummed once on the coffee table. It was a text from Roberta: How’s the peace and quiet?
Quiet, I texted back. A little strange. But peace is a muscle I haven't used in a while.
Hold the line, she replied. They’re going to hit the wall tomorrow.
She was right. By Christmas afternoon, the group chat was a total disaster zone. Colton had finally caved under pressure and agreed to host at his suburban mansion, but no one had designated an actual menu. Carol assumed Meredith was bringing a turkey. Meredith assumed Colton was ordering catering. Colton assumed Vanessa had placed an order weeks ago.
Vanessa, as it turned out, had ordered six rotisserie chickens from a local grocery store, which she forgot to pick up before the deli closed at 2:00 PM on Christmas Day.
At 4:30 PM, the scramble began. They scrambled for ham, for side dishes, for anything edible. By 5:45 PM, eighteen hungry, irritable adults and tired children were crowded into Colton’s open-concept living room with a grand total of two bags of ruffled potato chips, a tin of butter cookies, and whatever was left in Colton’s freezer.
At 6:00 PM, Colton made a desperate run to the only place open within twenty miles: a 24-hour gas station mini-mart.
At 6:03 PM, he left me the frantic voicemail: “Mom, there are eighteen people in my house—and only twelve sandwiches!”
May you like
I sat in my warm, quiet home, sipping my Earl Grey tea while Do Not Disturb muted the barrage of calls. I felt a fleeting pang of maternal guilt, but as I looked at Walter’s picture on the mantle, I remembered the years of exhaustion, the unpaid loans, the unthankful sighs, and the dismissed efforts.
They needed to taste the dry bread of their own entitlement.
