For a moment, I remembered the previous year.
Her ordering me out.
Daniel staring at his plate.
The cold hotel parking lot.
The midnight phone call.
The anger.
The silence.
Then Daniel slipped an arm around me.
“To a better year,” he said.
Margaret raised her glass.
“To fewer arguments.”
Claire laughed.
“That seems unrealistic.”
Even Margaret smiled.
I looked around the dining room.
To a stranger, almost nothing about the house had changed.
The same walls.
The same windows.
The same old hardwood floors.
But I no longer felt like someone waiting to be accepted.
I lived there.
I belonged there.
And, more importantly, Daniel finally understood that belonging was never something his mother had the authority to grant.
Or take away.
