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But the heart moves in mysterious ways.

Sensing my uncertainty, he says, “We can still leave.”

“No.” I straighten, remembering my spine came standard with the rest of me. “I won’t give her or Viv the satisfaction of seeing me flee.”

His mouth curves.

I swallow, bite down, and reach out to ring the doorbell.

But I stop halfway.

My empty hands are part of what’s freaking me out. For the last decade-plus, ever since I moved out, I’ve never come to my mother’s house without gifts.

A pie carrier. A sheet tray. A garment bag with my mother’s dry cleaning in it. A tube containing a pulldown projector screen.

Tonight, I’m bringing just me.

“Are you going to do it,” Kane drawls, “or would you like me to knock down the door?”

“Give me a second.”

“Take a minute if you need it. It’s your house.”

“It is very much not my house.”

“Then we’ll go get a better dinner somewhere with more enjoyable company.”

He’s half-joking, but if I took him up on it, I know for a fact that he would turn around right now and put me back in the car. We’d be eating dumplings in Sunset Park in twenty minutes and he wouldn’t mention it again.

That’s actually what makes me able to knock.

Uncle Bub opens the door. He looks at me, then up at Kane, then turns pale, then looks back at me.

“D-Delilah,” he stutters.

“Hi, Uncle Bub.”

“You, uh…” He clears his throat. “You look well.”

“Thanks. You look exactly the same.” I give him a bright, sunny smile. “May I come in?”

He wordlessly steps aside.

From the mouth of the foyer, I can see twenty-odd people packed into the living room and the dining room with drinks in their hands. The noise level drops by half when I come through the door.

Then it picks back up, but when it does, it’s wrong. Too loud in some corners, dead silent in others.

Kane takes my coat off my shoulders before I can do it myself and hangs it in the hall closet. Then he stands beside me with his hands at his sides and looks around at every single face in the room, slowly, one by one, until most of them find something else to look at.

My mother comes out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish towel.

She’s had her hair done. She looks at me, then at my empty hands, and her Stepford wife smile curdles into a flat line.

“Delilah,” she says. “You didn’t bring anything?”

Those are the first words out of my mother’s mouth.

Not hello.