A week after Sienna’s call, I drove up to Aspen Creek to drop off my mother’s blood pressure medication. She’d run out, and the pharmacy in town was closed for inventory.
The blue house looked smaller than I remembered. The windows were glowing with warm yellow light. The kind that used to mean home.
Inside, it smelled like cinnamon and pine. Sienna’s signature holiday scent. She sold it to her clients in little glass jars.
My mother was standing at the kitchen counter, taping a long sheet of paper to the refrigerator.
“Planning for the dinner already?” I asked.
She turned around, startled. Then she smiled at me. That tight, polite smile that meant I’d interrupted something.
“Oh, just trying to stay organized. There are so many people this year.”
I leaned in a little closer to the paper.
It was the Christmas Eve seating chart.
I scanned the names in her neat, slanted handwriting.
Richard. Marjorie. Sienna. Nova. The Keller family, all five of them. The Petersons from down the road. The Hendersons. Even a couple of Sienna’s clients I’d never heard of. Twenty-eight names. Twenty-eight chairs.
Lennon’s name wasn’t on it.
My chest tightened.
“Looks like a full house,” I said carefully. “Lennon’s really looking forward to it, Mom. She wants to drive herself up this year. Her first big drive.”
My mother’s mouth twitched into something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“Well. We’ll see. You know how crowded it gets. It might be easier if she just stays home with you this time.”
I didn’t say what I was thinking.
That Lennon was her only granddaughter on my side. That “crowded” isn’t the same thing as “unwelcome.” That my daughter had been to every single Christmas Eve dinner in that house since the day it was bought.
I just nodded. I handed her the bag of medication. And I walked back out to my car.
But before I left, while she was in the bathroom, I did something I’m not proud of.
I took the seating chart off the refrigerator. I folded it up and put it in my coat pocket.
And I put a blank sheet of paper up in its place, with the same tape.
She never noticed.
That list stuck in my head the whole drive home. The neat handwriting. The missing name. And the little note at the very bottom, underlined twice.
“Special guests — the Kellers.”
The Kellers own a chain of car dealerships in Boulder and Fort Collins. They throw a big company party every New Year’s Eve.
And Sienna had been trying to land them as clients for two years.
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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