looked at the vans packed for a holiday inside a house they had never even asked to enter.
“You’re right,” I said. “Christmas was never supposed to be about taking.”
Dad finally looked at me.
“Nora, please. We have nowhere to go.”
That sentence almost broke me.
Then I remembered fifteen years of empty chairs I had never been offered.
“There are hotels in town,” I said.
They left before sunset.
No dramatic shouting.
No grand collapse.
Just twenty-three people loading suitcases back into vans while the ocean wind did
