Chapter 14

Christmas Eve came around again the way it always does. Quietly, and then all at once. This year, I set the table myself. Not a mahogany monster built for forty. A scarred oak farmhouse table I'd found at an estate sale in Queens and sanded down with my own hands, wedged into the apartment above Place Card, where the radiator clanked and the windows fogged and the whole building smelled like cinnamon. Seven chairs. None of them matching. I made the place cards on plain white cardstock. My...