“Whitney,” she says, putting a hand over her chest. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” I wince. “Where’s Dad?”

“Ummm, upstairs, maybe? He was on a call, and I wanted to take a nap.” My mother never napped in the middle of the day and certainly not three days before Thanksgiving. It doesn’t even smell like she’s cooking anything.

“I’m surprised you’re not already cooking.” My eyes dart to the kitchen.

She sits up. “Oh. Yeah, we decided not to do anything this year.”

“What!?” I gasp in shock. “Why? You love Thanksgiving and holidays and tradition.”

“Well… we’re just taking a break this year.”

I let out a sigh. “This is about me and JP, right?”

“It’s about a lot of things. No one is speaking and—”

I interrupt, not wanting to entertain the narrative that I didn’t want to speak to them. “You’re not speaking to me, Mom, and Mason feels terrible about the fight with Dad.” I shake my head. “But this all stems from me.”

“It’s a lot to take in, Whit.”

“Mom, I fell in love.”

“With someone old enough to be your father. Someone that was actually like your father. I know you think that this is all about you and him but it’s bigger and you know that which is why you kept it from us for so long. This is… almost thirty years of friendship. Family. Jacob was the most important relationship your father and I had other than with each other and the two of you kind of wrecked that.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Oh?”

“No, Mom, it’s not fair to put that on us. You could still have that relationship with Jacob.”

“How? Knowing… what… you know maybe I could get by that. Maybe. But your father? I’m going to be blunt with you, honey, your father knows quite a bit about Jacob’s personal life and now he has that image of you with him.”

“Okay well… don’t picture it!”

“You’re being immature, Whitney. Maybe we didn’t handle it the best at the time but you can’t sit there and tell me you don’t understand why this is uncomfortable for us.”

“I do! I just don’t think you should cut us out of your life because of it.”

“I haven’t.”

“You don’t get me without him, Mom. Don’t you see? We wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t real. We came to you because we are ready to take the next step together and our families need to know. If it was just fun or sex or whatever…”

“Can you not?” She slides her glasses into her hair to rub her eyes. “I cannot believe you and my best friend from college. He slept with half the girls in our freshman year dorm, Whitney!”