Their father lived in Seattle now, and this was our first Christmas without him. She’d gotten so responsible since the divorce; sometimes I forgot she was only eight.

My mother, Patricia, had been bustling around in her Christmas apron, the one with the reindeer on it that she’d worn every December 25th for the past twenty years. “Just wait for Uncle Garrett and Aunt Jessica, sweetheart,” she’d told Tyler for the dozenth time.