Just because it turns out our relationship meant something to Jack a year ago, that doesn’t change the fact that I hurt her back then and she hurt me. It doesn’t change the fact that Jack thinks I’m in love with her brother, or that I’ve agreed to help Andrew get his inheritance and I can’t back out now.

And nothing could ever change the fact that two hundred thousand dollars is a life-altering amount of money for me.

I don’t have any choice at all.

Given their wealth, I expect the Kim-Prescott tree-decorating ceremony to be an exercise in both decadence and restraint. I expect color-coordinated ornaments and flawlessly arranged lights. I expect something magazine perfect and somewhat emotionally vacant.

I don’t expect to find Dylan and Andrew haphazardly stringing twinkle rainbow lights around the base of the ten-foot tree. I grab a plate of Bagel Bites, and Lovey presses play on “Glittery” by Kacey Musgraves and Troye Sivan. Katherine sits on a giant ottoman in the middle of the room, and Jack moves totes of Christmas ornaments to her feet.

“Oliver,” Andrew barks when he sees me, “come hold these lights for me.”

The Kim-Prescotts love their Christmas traditions. This one involves Katherine pulling an ornament from the neatly organized totes—each ornament personalized and unique and definitely not color-coded—and someone in the room sharing a memory associated with the ornament. An anecdote, an inside joke, a feeling.

Katherine pulls out the first one. It’s Mickey Mouse in a silver blue top hat holding a golden “50.”

“Disneyland in ’05,” Andrew says immediately. “JayJay, remember how you barfed on Space Mountain?”

“And still rode it six more times.” Jack nods solemnly.

The siblings high-five over this victory of gastrointestinal distress.

A Popsicle-stick reindeer. “One of my students made that for me during my student teaching, and it was the first time I felt like I was in the right career,” Dylan says with sweet nostalgia. They’re also wearing a T-shirt that says, “Merry Capitalist Consumer-Driven Corruption of a Pagan Fertility Holiday.” Because there is nothing Dylan Montez loves more than ironic juxtapositions.

A sparkly rainbow orb. “Do you remember Pride that year when we drunkenly tried to smuggle Fifty Licks into that drag show, and ice cream melted all over Dylan’s fanny pack?”

A giant martini glass. “Richard never let me hang that on the tree when we were married, God rest his crusty-ass soul.”

“I can’t believe y’all put my face on giant orb.”

“Remember, Dolly Parton needs to go front and center.”

“Who hid my kombucha ornament?”

I sit on the couch with Paul Hollywood snuggled against my side, sipping cups of mulled wine that magically refill themselves every time Meemaw gets up. I’m not a part of the reminiscence, but I’m not wholly separate from it, either, watching the family get lost in their shared memories of love.