“Actually, Jen, could you step out for this one? It’s just blood family. You understand. You’re only married in.”
My sister-in-law said it with a smile. Loud enough for the whole line to hear.
There were thirty-one of us standing in front of the big red barn on the Pedersen home place, squinting into the July sun. Three generations. Aunts and uncles and cousins and their kids. A photographer from Mankato named Craig, who Dana had hired for six hundred dollars, standing in the grass with a camera on a tripod.
I was in the second row, next to my husband, Mike. Our youngest, Lily, was on my hip. She’s three. She’d been fussy all morning and had finally settled down with her head on my shoulder.
Dana was standing in front of the whole group with her clipboard. She’s been the family organizer since her divorce. She plans the reunion every year. She picks the date. She makes the T-shirts. This year she’d decided we needed “real family portraits,” and she’d hired Craig.
And now she was looking right at me.
“Just for this one,” she said. “Then we’ll do one with spouses after. It’s for the family album. You understand.”
I felt every single face in that line turn toward me.
Mike’s mouth opened.
I put my hand on his arm.
I’ve been married to Mike Pedersen for twenty-two years. I have spent every Christmas Eve of those twenty-two years in his mother’s kitchen, making lefse. I have been to every Easter, every Fourth of July, every reunion, every confirmation, every funeral. I drove his father to his chemotherapy appointments for eight months in 2014 because Mike couldn’t get off work and nobody else would. I held his grandfather’s hand in the nursing home the night he died, because I was the one who happened to be there.
I have three children with Pedersen blood in them.
None of that mattered right then. Right then, I was the person in the wrong place in the picture.
So I did what I’ve always done.
I handed Lily to Mike.
She fussed. He bounced her. She settled.
I stepped out of the line.
I walked across the grass to the picnic table by the old pump house and stood there with my arms crossed and my sunglasses on, so nobody could see my eyes.
Nobody said anything.
Not Mike’s mother. Not his brother. Not any of the cousins.
Craig the photographer looked at Dana. Dana nodded.
“Okay,” Craig said. “Everybody squeeze in a little to fill the gap. Big smiles.”
Everybody squeezed in.
Craig lifted the camera.
And that’s when I heard the cane hit the ground.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.