“Impressive,” I said. “I always wondered how you did brain surgery.” I sidled up to John and gave him a kiss. A real one, like I didn’t have the weight of hosting Thanksgiving sitting on my shoulders.

When we came up for air, he gave me the look.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said. “You have potatoes to mash.”

His face fell. “Really? We’ve got the house to ourselves. And it might be a good thing to find out if we can still remember how to make love without an agenda.”

John and I had decided to take trying to get pregnant temporarily off our To Do list until the renovations were finished. I’d ditched my digital ovulation kit and stopped peeing on sticks. We’d put off trying to decide when to make an appointment with a fertility specialist.

In the four-legged department, John had decided Horatio needed another dog to hang out with, as well as to balance all the cats that had come into our life. But we’d also made the decision not to increase our canine family until we were safely post-renovation and the dust had settled.

We’d even tabled John’s marriage proposal for a while. I was afraid any wedding we planned would only bring back memories of our first weddings, of our starter marriages that had both crashed and burned. I had enough Irish worldview in me to think that happiness in this life was something to be downplayed so you didn’t jinx it. Waving another set of wedding rings around was like asking for lightning to strike twice.

I had to admit it felt pretty good to take a brief time-out from all of it.

John reached his arms around me and started massaging the holiday stress from the back of my neck.

“Good try,” I said, “but you know the second we get our clothes off, someone will show up early. Probably even my entire family.”

We kissed again, long and leisurely, like we had a lifetime of kissing ahead of us. I wondered if we could get away with handing my family takeout bags and sending them on their merry way when they showed up for dinner. And then we could get back to this kiss.

“Do I get a raincheck for later?” John whispered.

I gave him a quick kiss on the ticklish spot behind his right ear. “Absolutely.”

My siblings and their families came in through the kitchen door, dumping desserts—pumpkin pie, cranberry cobbler, Boston cream pie, whoopie pies—on the kitchen counter. They carried side dishes—grilled Brussels sprouts with bacon and pecans, parmesan peas, smashed cauliflower, maple walnut sweet potatoes, apple and cranberry stuffing with sausage—straight to the dining room.

The turkey cracks started immediately.

“Hey, Sarah,” my brother Michael said. “Was that you I saw earlier on the side of the road scoopin’ up some roadkill?”