She didn’t apologize immediately; she just looked at me and said, “It was a disaster, Arthur.” They had tried to cram eighteen people into a space meant for four, and the infrastructure of her old apartment building simply gave up under the pressure.
Without a professional-grade kitchen and the organization I usually provided, the meal had fallen apart, and the burst pipe was the final nail in the coffin. They had spent the morning huddled under blankets, eating cold ham and realizing how much they had taken for granted.
Here is where the first real change happened. I didn’t go to the kitchen. I didn’t put on an apron, and I didn’t start barking orders about where people should sit. I went over to my armchair, sat down with my book, and stayed there. The room went silent as they realized I wasn’t going to jump into “host mode.” Beatrix looked at me, confused, and I simply smiled and said, “There’s a freezer full of food and a stove that works perfectly, but I’m on strike this year.”
For a moment, I thought they might leave, but then Silas looked at the empty kitchen and then back at me. He walked into the kitchen, picked up a knife, and asked, “Where do you keep the potatoes?” One by one, they followed him. Julian started hauling the folding chairs out of the garage without being asked. My sister began organizing the “potluck” items they had brought, realizing that they needed a real plan to make a meal happen for a crowd this size.
I watched them from my chair, and it was like watching a movie of my own life but with different actors. They were bickering over how to season the bird and struggling to find the right serving platters.
They were making a massive mess, and the timing was completely off, but they were doing it together. For the first time in ten years, I wasn’t the one sweating over the stove, and for the first time in ten years, they were actually talking to each other instead of just waiting to be fed.
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