“Always.”

They talked awhile longer before hanging up. The house was quiet. Tuesday had already left for her sister’s in San Diego, so Natalie was alone. She headed downstairs to make some tea. It was cold, and she wasn’t sure if Paddy was coming over or not, so she may as well tuck in and get warmer.

She put the kettle on the stove—after all, it was something she could do without damaging the stove or the teakettle—and put a bag in a mug. She considered digging out the bag of cookies hidden in the pantry but decided against it.

The phone rang again, and she picked it up expecting it to be Jenny or Zoe calling back.

“Natalie, it’s your grandmother.”

She held back a heavy sigh. She’d known this call was coming after all this stuff with her father. He’d have run up to Bellevue to whine to his mother, who had neglected him as much as he’d neglected Natalie. Now her grandmother would try to manipulate her.

Thing was, she’d reached a stage in her life where she was pretty over being manipulated by people.

She took a deep breath and searched for her manners, though. “Hello, Grandma. How are you?”

“I’m calling to invite you to Thanksgiving. Your father is in town, so it’ll be the three of us.”

“Thank you but I have plans.” And she sure as hell didn’t plan to spend an entire day watching her grandmother drink herself into oblivion while she fretted about Bob and what a waste of Natalie’s life it was to work for such little pay at a library.

“With family? This is a family holiday, Natalie. Not a day to wear sweatpants and lay around with your roommates.”

Natalie gritted her teeth for a moment. To be lectured by a person who knew what her life was like and never worked to get her out of it was unbearable.

“Yes, actually. With family.”

“How can that be? I’m your family. Your father is your family, and we are both here inviting you, and you’re rejecting us. I don’t think you were raised to be so ungrateful.” Her grandmother piled on the haughty, and it only strengthened Natalie’s resolve not to give in.

“It can be because family is more about what you do than who you are.” Natalie knew her tone had gone frosty, but it was better than saying something she couldn’t take back.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m spending the day with people who are there for me when it counts. Someone isn’t your family simply because they contributed to your DNA. Family is how you act. These people are my family and it would be terribly rude of me to cancel at the last minute.”

“That sounds like something you read in one of those self-help books. But we’re your family. Surely these friends can understand that. Why would you hurt my feelings to protect someone else’s?”

Ah, there it was. And suddenly, it was just too much to bite her tongue yet again, even if she was an elderly woman and Natalie’s grandmother. Because she’d spent a lifetime the victim of people who never acted to put anyone’s feelings first.

“Understand what, exactly? I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but it’s time we were honest with each other, don’t you think?”

“I think it’s time you got over your silly, infantile anger at your father. He loves you. He’s trying to do right and your refusal to let him do that is hindering his recovery.”

It was just...enough. Years and years of just letting it pass. Of taking it to keep the peace and suddenly, she had nothing left to do it anymore.

“Well, here’s what I think. I’m not responsible for his recovery. He is. I think it’s time you realize that he spent my entire childhood in a drugged-out, drunken stupor. I think it’s time you realize that those times when I begged you to let me live with you and you sent me back to keep an eye on my father and keep him safe, you turned your back on me and made me raise him when that was your job to start with. I think it’s time you realize that I had to step over used needles and pools of vomit strangers left in my living room. I think it’s time you realize that he’s done his I’m clean now routine seven times now. I’m done. I’m done with all of it. I’m not coming to your house on Thanksgiving to listen to how nothing is his fault. Jesus! He’s not the only person on earth who has gotten clean. He’s got money in the bank and more chances than most addicts ever will. They can do it. They do it every damned day because they work on it. I think he’s not interested in working because that means he’d have to, for once in his life, stand up and accept what he has done and really want to change it.”

There was a knock at her door, and she was so mad she just let Paddy in, not caring that he might hear this silly bullshit.

He leaned to kiss her forehead and rustled through cabinets to get tea ready, getting the hot water poured in her mug and one for himself, too.

He smelled good. Like late fall. Crisp air, wood fires, the cold. He was real, and he was good.

“I had no idea you had so much anger in you. Robert told me about it, of course, but you’ve never said.” Her grandmother was a top-notch guilt artist, right down to the wobble in her voice.

“I think it would be more appropriate to say you’ve never listened to me when I attempted to talk to you about it.”

“I can see this boy your father says you were with has had some negative influence on you. You have responsibilities to your family. No one is perfect, Natalie. Your own mother certainly wasn’t.”