The fighting-with-my-mom phase was short-lived once I realized there was no guarantee that Linds wouldn’t just take off like Jed had. What several therapists have deemed an insecure attachment style means I now avoid arguing with my mother at all costs. It also means that after the Christmas-cookie argument, I’m anxious that things among the Kim-Prescotts are going to be tense.

Instead, they are… not.

Andrew and Dylan come back inside to help me decorate the cutout cookies with frosting and sprinkles, and Katherine’s headache wears off in time to press the dasik cookies using the baking molds that belonged to her halmoni. As soon as five o’clock hits, Meemaw’s pulling a pitcher of sangria from the fridge and blaring some Kacey Musgraves Christmas music. The kitchen is a disaster zone, so we throw leftover short rib or beef tenderloin over bowls of rice and eat at the counter while we finish decorating. Mostly, we eat cookies for dinner because we’re all a little stoned. The earlier argument about money is entirely forgotten.

I guess maybe that’s how it works in families who love each other unconditionally: you can fight without fear of losing them and be honest without consequences or repercussions.

Alan promises he’ll be there Tuesday morning to go pick out a Christmas tree.

He’s not, and we don’t.

Instead, we spend most of the day working on a giant Christmas puzzle. We go into separate rooms to wrap presents for each other to put under the hypothetical tree. I go with Andrew and watch the carnage of his attempts to wrap presents—the amount of tape he uses should be an actual crime—until he finally concedes and lets me do all the wrapping. Lovey makes vegan lasagna for dinner, and we all eat together, pretending not to notice the conspicuously empty chair at the head of the table. Everyone seems a little morose as we move into the evening’s event.

Christmas carols: two hours.

At seven o’clock sharp, Katherine ushers the entire family from the kitchen into the living room. There isn’t actual caroling involved in Katherine’s Christmas carols, since we’re isolated in a cabin in the mountains with nowhere to carol to. There’s an upright piano tucked into the corner of the living room, and we all gather in a semicircle around it. Meemaw pours the sangria, and Dylan rushes off to fetch their guitar.

“Who’s going first this year?” Katherine asks gleefully.

Meemaw whips around to face me and Andrew sitting side by side on an ottoman. “Why don’t the lovebirds sing a little duet for us?” She waggles her eyebrows at us.

My singing voice is awful, but if Meemaw needs to hear Andrew and me sing a duet to believe our relationship, I’ll step up to the piano.

“Oh,” Andrew says, tensing. “A duet. I mean, Dylan and I usually—”