Page 166 of End Game

The words hang over the table for several seconds.

My mother wipes quickly under one eye.

Margot finally speaks. “Ronan is right about one thing.”

I look toward her.

Margot’s attention is on our parents instead. “This does make it look like Ronan is the black sheep. Like he is the one we’re accommodating around.”

“Thank you.”

Mom sighs. “Margot.”

“I’m not saying you did it deliberately,” Margot continues. “I know why you planned it this way. Mike’s family has us in the morning, Tori doesn’t want the girls running to multiple Christmases, and Sarah and Theo could only make tonight work. I know there are logistics.”

Exactly. There are always logistics.

Most people don’t wake up in the morning and deliberately decide to treat someone they love unfairly. Instead, there are schedules and competing obligations and seemingly reasonable compromises until everyone can explain every individual decision and nobody wants to examine what those decisions added up to.

“The road to hell,” I mutter.

Micah’s mouth twitches.

My mother sighs. “So what should I have done, Ronan?”

There isn’t any anger in the question, which would probably make it easier.

She genuinely wants an answer.

The problem is that I don’t have one.

“I don’t know.”

Her eyebrows rise.

“I genuinely don’t,” I clarify. “I don’t have a perfect solution for you, which is something I’m learning to tolerate with tremendous irritation.”

Micah snorts quietly.

I narrow my eyes across the table at him.

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No.”

A small laugh escapes Cami, and I am irrationally grateful for it.

I turn back to my mother. “I don’t know exactly what you should have done. I just need you to understand why this feels like Ben still gets Christmas, and we get the side show.”

Her face crumples slightly. “I don’t want you to feel that way.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want Cami to feel that way either.”

“I know that too.”