“Baby, it’s—”

“I’m sorry I don’t call enough. I’m going to start calling you all the time, and save up money so that I can visit. I’m sorry about . . .” My apology generator is rusty. I reflect on using her emergency credit card to buy a three-hundred-dollar vintage Ouija board so that I could talk to Rue McClanahan when I was seventeen. “A lot of things.”

My mother holds me tight, rocking me back and forth. “I will always love you, no matter what. I will always support you, even if it doesn’t look like it. Sometimes support looks like disagreeing with you or telling you that you’re on the wrong path. But your heart is in my heart, always, and all I want for you is a good, healthy life.”

Kaia begins to establish plans for us to all get together in mid-January, and I believe her when she elbows me, saying I’d better show up. I don’t fight Athena when she volunteers to pay for my airfare, because I can see now that she isn’t doing it to look superior. My family wants me around. It’s taken my whole life to realize that not being the center of attention isn’t the same thing as being ignored.

Is this growth? I don’t care for it. It’s like wearing the wrong size clothing. I analyze their faces—well-meaning, frequently annoying, but unconditionally at my back. A support network. No matter what, they love me; no matter what, I truly love them. This circus is mine.

It’s something to hold on to.

The youngest children try wandering off, which sends the adults chasing after them with loud apologies tossed, that they still have packing to do. As I shout my goodbyes, Grandpa loiters behind, his gaze snagging on my kitchen table, where the record player rests. “Oh, good! You must like the birthday present I picked out for you, then.”

“You picked out the record player?” Usually Grandma is in charge of gift-buying for birthdays and holidays, and Grandpa simply signs the cards.

His whiskers twitch. “You’re shocked.”

It’s true. “Am not.”

He passes me a chocolate from his coat pocket, then unwraps one for himself, nodding. “I bought that at an auction, as a matter of fact, at the Magic Towne House in New York City from a man by the name of Walter B. Gibson, many years ago. I rediscovered it sitting in my closet a few months before your birthday and had to work hard to convince your grandmother that a beat-up old Kinollghy could be spruced up enough to be a fine present for our Bettie. Enabled me to do plenty of tinkering, so it was a present for myself, too. I got to lug it back and forth to an electronics shop in Greenbriar, since the one here in town said the task was beyond them, but they got invested emotionally, came along to Greenbriar to watch. You should have seen it—a room full of old tinkerers putting their heads together, making it good as new, while I threw out suggestions in the background about the color of wood stain as if I were helping. But you like it, then?”