I hate to admit it, but I’ve wondered the same thing. Did the stuffing have too much pepper, even though Marty said you can never have too much? Did Jack, Peter, Miles, and Max fight over the wishbone? Did Juliet’s pumpkin pie that she slaved over all day yesterday turn out? For people I just met, I’m way too invested in the Stanworth family Thanksgiving dinner.
“There’s no way their turkey is as moist as mine.” My dad sits a little taller, as if a moist turkey is the peak of his existence.
“Don, stop saying the wordmoist.” My mom scrunches her nose. “I don’t like it.”
“What don’t you like about it?”
“I don’t know. It’s like nails scratching over a chalkboard. It just gives me a funny feeling.”
“Moist gives you a funny feeling?”
“Yes.” She half-heartedly covers her ears.
“How does moist give you a funny feeling?”
“I don’t know, Don. It just does.”
I bite back my smile, happily listening to my parents go back and forth in quite possibly the dumbest argument of all mankind.
But I love it.
I’ve missed it.
I know it isn’t much, but it’s the grounding feeling I’ve been chasing this last year. The life roots that actually matter. I couldn’t explain the emptiness inside me until two months ago when I sat in the middle of Lars’s funeral and heard his family talk about the kind of man he was.
Sure, there were talks about the tricks he pulled, the mountains he’d climbed, the bridges he’d jumped off, but that was all secondary to the real person he was. It wasn’t the daredevil stunts that defined his life. It was how he treated the ones he loved.
I knew if I died right then, the entirety of my life would be defined by the cool things I’d done and not the relationships I’d fostered, and that’s not what I want. So I came home, and now I’m eating Thanksgiving dinner, discussing the cringe factor of the word moist.
“Well, I hope Justin is having a lovely meal with Summer’s family.” My mom looks at me as she scrapes a small portion of sweet potatoes onto her fork. “Caleb, have you met Summer yet?”
“We’ve had a few chances to get to know each other.”
“And what do you think? Do you think she’s the one?”
I push a few kernels of corn around my plate. “What do I think?”
Well, for starters, I think she’s all wrong for Justin. There’s a quirkiness about her that will eventually annoy him. She’s way too needy—not in a whiney way, but in a constantly craving attention sort of way. She thrives on loving and being loved in return, and Justin is never going to fulfill that need in her life. He’s always going to be working toward the next big goal. But I can’t say that to my mom, not when she’s pinned her hopes and dreams of becoming a grandmother on Justin and Summer getting married. So I lie.
“It looks promising.” Then I shove an entire spoonful of potatoes and gravy into my mouth before I have to say anything else about Justin and Summer.
SUMMER
* * *
“Geez,what’s with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in there?” Anna asks as she carries a stack of dirty dishes into the kitchen.
“What do you mean?” I move the roaster pan so she has somewhere to set them all.
“I mean, Justin just asked my boys not to jump on his back because he’s working when, last night, he was the one initiating the wrestling.”
Hailey whips around from her spot by the refrigerator. “Okay, thank you! I was waiting for someone to say something. It’s like he is a completely different person. Aunt Carma told him she had some ideas for‘their’blankets, and he got all defensive, like he had no clue what she was talking about.”
My grip tightens on the dish I’m drying. I hoped my family wouldn’t notice his change from last night. But going from the life of the party to the workaholic in the corner is a pretty big difference.
The thing is, Justin can be the life of the party like Caleb. Okay, notexactlylike Caleb, but he’s still a really fun guy. Work is just bogging him down right now.
“Um…I don’t think he feels well,” I say. “He was up all night working, prepping for Black Friday, and I know he has a migraine, so he’s just a little off tonight.” I embellish the details, hoping it’s enough to convince them. “Not to mention stressed about the sale tomorrow.”
