I drove home faster than I should have in the snow.
When I opened the door to our apartment in East Boulder, the first thing I noticed was the quiet.
No music. No TV. No movement. Just the faint hum of the heater.
Then I saw her boots. Lined up neatly by the door, the way I’d taught her when she was little. Her overnight bag was sitting right next to them. Still zipped.
Lennon.
She was curled up on the couch, still wearing her winter coat. Her knees were pulled up to her chest like she was bracing against the cold, even though the apartment was warm.
She wasn’t asleep. Her eyes opened the second I whispered her name.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
I knelt down next to the couch.
“What happened? Why are you here?”
Her shoulders tensed up under the coat.
“They said there wasn’t any room,” she murmured. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
I blinked at her.
“Room where?”
“At the table,” she said.
She choked halfway through the words. Then she tried to cover it up with a shrug. It didn’t work.
“Grandma said she didn’t expect me. That they already had too many people. She said she couldn’t pull up another chair at the last minute.”
My brain stalled. Like an engine that won’t turn over.
“Did you get there late, honey?”
“No. I was early,” she said quickly. “I got there at four-thirty. I brought cookies. I made the snickerdoodles. And I wore the green sweater Grandma said she liked last year.”
She laughed once. Thin and bitter. A sound I’d never heard come out of my daughter before.
“There were like twenty-eight people inside, Dad. I could see them through the front window. Aunt Sienna’s daughter Nova was sitting in my seat. My usual spot. By the window. Everybody was laughing. Grandma came to the door and stood in it. Like, in the doorway. And she said, ‘Oh, Lennon. It’s just too crowded this year.'”
I couldn’t find any words.
“Aunt Sienna was right behind her,” Lennon said. “She just nodded. Like, yeah. Too crowded.”
Lennon looked down at her hands in her lap.
“I didn’t want to make Grandma mad. So I just left. I wasn’t that hungry anyway.”
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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