I found my mother first. She wasn’t sitting in the custom velvet armchair I had bought specifically for her bad hip. She was curled up on the small, stiff loveseat in the far corner, the one piece of furniture we had brought from their old apartment because we hadn’t found a replacement yet. She looked small, shrinking into the fabric, clutching a coaster as if terrified to set it down.
Then I saw my father. My dad—a man who had worked twelve-hour days in the scorching sun to put me through design school—was standing in the hallway that led to the kitchen. He was holding a paper plate. On it sat a cold, pathetic scoop of pasta salad. He was eating standing up, his back pressed against the wall, trying to make himself as flat as possible so the servers rushing past wouldn’t bump into him. He looked displaced. He looked like an intruder in the home I had bought for him.
“Oh, excuse me,” a woman in a floral dress chirped, brushing past me and nearly knocking the champagne from my hand. “Are you with the catering staff? We need more napkins by the diaper cake station.”
I couldn’t breathe. The rage was rising so fast it choked me.
I looked toward the center of the room where a white, throne-like wicker chair had been set up, and there she was. Vanessa. My sister-in-law. She was glowing, radiating that specific brand of smug satisfaction that only she could master. She was holding court, laughing, her hand resting protectively over her baby bump. My brother Jason was hovering nearby, holding a tray of appetizers, looking less like a father-to-be and more like a nervous waiter.
