“Dad will be there at six.“
“Mom, heads up, Dad might bring someone.“
“Sophie, please don’t start anything tonight.“
“Dad, Uncle Daniel is coming. Please don’t make it weird.“
She looked at each one of us in turn.
“I’ve been doing this since I was seventeen.”
Seventeen.
And suddenly I could see her. Seventeen, at our kitchen table the week Tom moved out. Asking me whether Sophie knew yet. Asking whether Christmas would be different now. Asking whether Dad would still come to her school awards night.
I had thought she was handling the divorce beautifully.
She hadn’t been handling the divorce.
She’d been handling us.
Part Eleven: “You Get Very Good at Giving Them Reasons to Stay”
“Every time one of you got angry,” Emma said, “somebody threatened not to come.”
Not a sound in the room.
“Dad wouldn’t come if Mom’s family was going to be there. Mom didn’t want to come if Dad was bringing somebody. Sophie wouldn’t come if Dad had disappointed her again.”
She looked at her sister. Then at me. Then at her father.
“Do you know what happens when everyone you love keeps threatening to leave?”
