I called my cousin Tanya first. She’s twenty-eight and lives in Hoboken, and she’s always been close to our side of the family. She’d been at Christmas last year but not the two years before that.
When I asked why, she said Susette had told her that my family preferred smaller holidays and had specifically asked her not to invite Tanya, because Caleb and Lily needed a quieter environment.
“She said we asked her not to invite you?”
“Yeah. She made it sound like you guys were dealing with something and needed space. I didn’t want to pry.”
“Tanya, we never said that. We didn’t even know you weren’t coming.”
“Are you serious right now?”
Then I called my cousin Drew. He’d stopped coming three years ago because Susette told him the dinner had a “couples only” policy, and since he was single, it might be awkward.
He laughed when he told me, like it was funny. It wasn’t.
Then Marcus. Two years earlier, right before Christmas, his girlfriend at the time had suddenly broken up with him. Months later, she told him why: Susette had pulled her aside at a family birthday party and told her, “as a friend,” that Marcus was talking to other women behind her back.
It wasn’t true. By the time Marcus found out what Susette had said, the relationship was over.
Over the next two weeks, I called every relative I could think of. Aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins. Some of them I hadn’t talked to in three or four years.
Uncle Pete, my dad’s younger brother, the one who’d always been in my corner, told me he’d made one comment at Christmas two years ago. Nothing dramatic. Just, “Why are Wes and his kids eating in the hallway?”
After dinner, Susette pulled him aside and told him that if he was going to cause problems, she’d prefer he not come back. Pete told her where she could put her preference. Susette told Garrett to handle it. The next day, Garrett called Pete and asked him, to “keep the peace,” to sit the next one out.
“She told us you had a scheduling conflict,” I said.
“A scheduling conflict,” Pete said flatly. “On Christmas. That’s creative.”
My dad’s cousin Frank and his wife, Joanne, had been told two years earlier that Christmas was moving to a restaurant that year and that Susette would send the details. She never did. They assumed it was canceled. Susette told everyone else they were visiting her family in Pennsylvania.
Even Nadia’s parents, who aren’t technically family, had been reached. Nadia’s mother had once mentioned that she’d love to come to a Brandt family Christmas sometime. Susette told her that Wesley’s mother was “very particular about keeping it small.”
Nadia didn’t find out until she finally asked her own mother.
When I laid it all out on my kitchen table on a yellow legal pad, the pattern was impossible to miss.
Susette had been pruning the family tree for years.
She never screamed at anyone or threw anyone out. She made one gentle, concerned phone call explaining why it would be better if you didn’t come. Then she told everyone else a different story about why you weren’t there.
And nobody ever compared notes. Why would you? If your sister-in-law tells you your aunt isn’t coming, you believe her.
That night, on our back porch after the kids were in bed, I told Nadia all of it.
She listened. Then she said, “So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Yes, you do,” she said. “You’re a caterer, Wesley. You throw events for a living. You feed two hundred people at a time. You know exactly what you’re going to do.”
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.