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“Oh my God, I have had the wildest few days—” I start to say, but she cuts me off.

“No time. No time for any of that. Today is fully dedicated to setup for tonight.”

“Oh-kay. So what do you need?” I ask, immediately cutting to the chase.

Frankie puts on her most angelic voice. “Your mom’s famous latkes?”

I sigh, and before I can reply, she shouts, “Threedozenthankyouloveyabyeeee,” and hangs up.

There goes my day.

A few hours later, I’ve already destroyed the kitchen, trying to fulfill Frankie’s request. Mom swore off homemade latkes this year, claiming they were more trouble than they were worth. While I disagree, since latkes are a perfect food, I’m beginning to see where she was coming from. I think I’ve shredded more potatoes into my hair than the bowl itself. I’ve broken two nails in the process and just barely still have the knuckle of my thumb in one piece. My once-black student leadership hoodie is now bordering charcoal with the amount of flour covering my entire torso.

But we’re almost there.

I look at the bowl of mush and grab a small measuring cup from the drawer.

Almost there.

I turn the heat up on a burner and wait for the pan to get hot. I grab the vegetable oil from the cabinet and frown. It’s barely enough to fry three latkes, let alone the three dozen I promised Frankie I’d bring tonight.

I turn off the burner and sigh. I could go to the store, but I don’t have a car, and the airline promised that my suitcase should be delivered within the hour. I check Postmates, but the estimated delivery time is way too long to be convenient or worth the exorbitant upcharge for a four-dollar bottle of oil. The frying is going to take a while, and I really need to get started.

I look out the window, and I see lights on next door.

Henry.

I sigh, ready to give up all my dignity, and head over.

He answers the door, a bemused smirk spreading across his lips as he looks me up and down. “Norah Gold, really swinging strong for the holidays, huh?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be,” I tell him.

He leans on the frame of the front door, crossing one foot in front of the other. “So, to what do I owe—”

“I need oil,” I say, cutting him off because that lean is doing something to me that I don’t like. “Do you have any vegetable or canola oil?”

“There are stores for that, you know.”

I tell him that I’m waiting for my suitcase to finally arrive, and how I couldn’t risk missing it.

“You certainly couldn’t,” he says, giving me another once-over.

“Surely you can spare some oil,” I say. “I mean, we’re practically family now, right?”

The look on his face is completely unreadable, but he steps aside, allowing me to plow into the house.

I head for the kitchen, muscle memory leading me there, but quickly get overwhelmed by the familiarity. The smell of patchouli that always lingered here. The wooden cabinets I used to love. The one weird hot plate tile attached to the kitchen counter, a quirk of the house.

When we were maybe six years old, Henry and I made it our mission to get rid of the tile, whatever it took. We tried prying it up with sticks and a metal nail file. Bashing it with the end of a large serving spoon. When Kristine found us, she was furious. It’s honestly shocking we didn’t get hurt. We weren’t allowed to play together for a few days as punishment, but our parents quickly gave in, and then I was back at the Cole house like I always was.

I haven’t been in here since the day everything went wrong.

Henry emerges from the pantry with an unopened bottle of vegetable oil. “I was raised firmly nothing, so correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t there a joke to be made about running out of oil? Wasn’t the whole point that it lasted eight nights?”

He says it so innocently that I almost want to laugh, but I can’t give him the satisfaction. Yes, that’s absolutely the CliffsNotes version of Hanukkah, and yes, I am royally screwing up my people’s history here.

“Look,” I tell him, taking the bottle, careful to not let our fingers come within four inches of each other, “I promised Frankie I would bring my mom’s famous latkes to the reunion, but Mom is gone, so I’m figuring it out. She refused to make them this year because of how labor-intensive they are, and honestly?” I pull some shredded potato I can see in my periphery out of my hair. “She’s not wrong. So thank you for the oil. You did your mitzvah.”