As for Tori, we haven’t spoken once since the wedding.
I heard through Marco that Kevin’s Apex Elevation venture collapsed completely by Thanksgiving. He’d spent over $5,000 total, between the summit, the Diamond Tier upgrade, the suit, and “starter kits.” He’d sold zero coaching packages. They’d maxed out two credit cards. Their car went into collections in December.
Tori, according to Marco, had started blaming Kevin for the whole financial mess. Which was convenient, since six weeks earlier she’d been calling herself his secret weapon.
Kevin got a job in January, driving a delivery van for a regional distributor. Steady hours. Health insurance. Marco says he actually seems kind of relieved.
My parents quietly gave them money for Christmas. I know because Marco told me. I didn’t say anything about it. It’s their money. They can do what they want with it.
I just made peace with the fact that the pattern probably won’t change. Tori will always need rescuing. My parents will always reach for their checkbook.
The difference is, I’m not standing in the splash zone anymore.
Christmas was small. Naomi and I hosted for the first time, in our little house in Clintonville. Jim and Son came, and Daniel and his wife, and Marco and his wife, Linda. We made way too much food. Short ribs, because they’d been the hit of the wedding, and Son’s japchae, and Linda’s sweet potato casserole, and a ham nobody needed.
We played cards until midnight. Marco told the story of the time my dad got stuck on the garage roof in 1994 trying to fix a satellite dish and had to be rescued by the neighbor’s teenage son with a ladder. Everybody laughed until they cried. Even Jim, who doesn’t laugh out loud at much of anything.
It was easy. It was warm. It was the kind of Christmas I’d been wanting my whole life without realizing that’s what I was wanting.
My parents came over the next day, the twenty-sixth, just for a couple of hours. They brought an apple pie. My dad asked me about the hospital project, and when I answered, he actually listened. He asked follow-up questions. He wanted to know how they get the steel beams up to the fourth floor.
My mom brought a little gift for Naomi. A hand-knitted dish towel with an H on it.
“For your first kitchen,” she said. “Every Herrera kitchen has one.”
Naomi hung it on the oven door. It’s still there.
It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t the family I used to lie awake wishing for. But it was honest. And I’ll take honest.
Tori wasn’t there. She wasn’t invited.
Maybe someday we’ll get to a place where we can be in the same room again. For Mason and Lily and Jude, I hope so. I still send the kids birthday cards. Lily sent me a drawing in December of a man in a suit and a woman in a white dress, with “UNCLE BAKE” written across the top in purple crayon. My mom gave it to me. It’s on our fridge now, next to Jim’s fishing lure magnet.
Maybe someday. Maybe not. I’m not forcing it.
Laura Bennett writes about complicated family dynamics, difficult conversations, and the quiet moments that change everything. Her stories focus on real-life tensions — inheritance disputes, strained marriages, loyalty tests — and the strength people find when they finally speak up. She believes the smallest decisions often carry the biggest consequences.