Aunty Steph angrily slaps her hand down on the plastic-covered counter and accidentally upends the hot cup. I start in surprise and jump back as chamomile tea sloshes all over the counter and onto the floor.

“What he has to offer?” she yells, not crying anymore. “I love him! If he loves me back, that’s what he has to offer. I know things haven’t been easy for you, Lori, but you could get over yourself once in a while and look around. Not everything is about you.” She gets off her stool and strides to the front of the house, slamming the door behind her.

Suddenly, there is silence again, and I realize my mouth is hanging open. I’ve never heard Aunty Steph raise her voice. I never considered she could tell off my mom. I kind of want to cheer for someone standing up to my mother for once, but the look on my mother’s face right now stops me in my tracks. I wonder what Aunty Steph meant about things not having been easy for her. I wait to see if she’s going to say anything, but my mother’s mouth is clamped tight. She grabs a roll of paper towel, thrusts it to me without a word, and stomps out of the kitchen. I hear her footsteps on the stairs and then the slam of her bedroom door.

I mop up the tea as best as I can. I go to the dining room and remove the name card and place setting for Shmuel Yosef. Then I go upstairs to my own room and slam my own door. I try calling Honey, but the phone just rings and rings. They are probably still down in their Pesach kitchen singing. I am ashamed to admit it, but I’m so jealous it makes me sick.

When Passover starts, Aunty Steph does not sing “lai-la-lai” and sway with my mother. She stands like a statue while my mother lights the candles.

Usually, my father leads the seder, unless we are with my grandparents in Israel, and then my grandfather leads. But either way, normally we are so many people sitting around a huge table and everyone reads out loud together from the Haggadah, which tells the story of Passover. This year, we are just five people sitting at the end of our dining room table like it is any old Shabbat.

Aunty Steph, who always fills our ears with her pretty voice, doesn’t join in a single song. My mother sits in stony silence. My dad, looking pale and waxy in the white kittel robe he wears to lead the Passover seder, sits at the head of the table reading from the Haggadah, but no one reads along with him this time. Max sits next to me, importantly flipping the pages of the Haggadah he made in school. “Is it my turn yet?” He keeps interrupting my dad. “I’m doing it myself this year, you know.” Every year, me and Max sing the “Mah Nishtanah” together—or at least the first verse, which is all he knows. But it’s really the job for the youngest child at the seder.