“I would have preferred Hawaii,” she admitted. “Or Thailand.”

“I just wish that my baby didn’t—”

“I just wish that everybody would forget it!” Beth said, cutting her off sharply. “I’m not a baby, I’m a woman. I would rather have gone on vacation with my family, or even Tad’s family, over Christmas, but it can’t be. Tad’s almost as bad as you—he offered to not go with his family so he could be here to babysit me. Honestly, everybody, I will be fine!”

We drove in silence for a while, the only sound the beating of the windshield wipers as they cleared away the snow.

Finally, Beth said, almost as an apology, “I really do wish I could go with you.”

“It’s the end of a family tradition,” my mother said with a sigh.

Going to Thailand for Christmas was something my mother’s family had been doing since long before Mom even met Dad. When Dad came along he joined in, and then when Beth and I were born we became part of the tradition too.

“It’s just so sad,” my mother said. “One after the other.”

I knew what she was thinking about. I just hoped she wasn’t going to cry. This was going to be the second Christmas since her mother died. Her father had passed on two years before that, so last Christmas had been the first with just the four of us…and this year there’d only be three.

“We’ll call you,” my mother said.

“If we can get a line,” my father warned.

He was right to mention that. Phuket was beautiful—maybe the most beautiful place in the whole world—but the phone service could be a little sketchy. Especially at the small resort where we always stayed. It was on an island, a wonderful place, but there were no televisions or computers. They’d put phones in the little bungalows where we stayed only two years earlier. It was sort of like the Land That Time Forgot. My mother called it Paradise, and apparently Paradise came without broadband wireless, Internet, or reliable cellphone reception.

Usually my father liked that. It was his chance to get away from the world—more specifically, to get away from his law firm. Christmas in Thailand was the one time he could leave his BlackBerry behind and not have the office calling and pestering him about his clients. But being out of touch this year wasn’t going to be such a bonus. It wouldn’t have been nearly as hard on my parents to leave Beth behind if they could have been tethered by a telephone line. They were worried about her.

That almost made me laugh—like they really thought they had to worry about my sister. She was, with-out a doubt, the most responsible nineteen-year-old in the world. She didn’t smoke or drink—not even a beer or a glass of wine. She was an honors student who had never skipped a class or failed a course—she’d never even had a grade below the high 80s. She was always where she was supposed to be, and on the rare occasions she couldn’t be, she called. She helped around the house. She made meals and cleaned up without being asked. All of my parents’ friends just loved her. She was on a full athletic scholarship, so even though my parents could easily have afforded to send her to school, she was there for free. Even her choice of boyfriend was perfect: Tad was in law school, he came from a good family, and he had a wonderful future in front of him. My sister was, in other words, probably the worst older sister a twelve-year-old guy could have.