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“It is,” I say. And mean it.

Dottie picked Bo up half an hour ago.

Before that the three of us had coffee at my table while Bo made me another drawing for the fridge. I didn’t have anything to draw with. No markers, no crayons, nothing. He worked with a ballpoint pen on a stack of my sticky notes, one little figure per square, and he was appalled.

He insisted that before his next visit I buy everything on the list he made me, from crayons to glue.

Now it’s just me and the wreckage. Flour on every surface. A bowl I’m a little afraid of. Cinnamon somewhere it has no business being. A month ago my counters were never anything but clean.

I wipe it all down, one thing at a time, and notice how my cheeks hurt from smiling. I’ve been smiling for half an hour. Alone. At nobody.

My phone buzzes on the counter. Luke.

“How’d it go?”

“He put a leaf that touched the floor on the pie.”

“Sounds about right.” I can hear the grin. “You survive?”

“Barely. He left me a shopping list for art supplies.” I laugh. “How’s your night going?”

“Quiet, actually.” A pause on his end. “Shift’s been dead all day. Haven’t moved since lunch.”

The words are barely out before I hear it start up behind him. The wind-up of the station coming alive, a siren blaring.

“You jinxed it,” I say.

“I jinxed it.” I can hear him stand up. “I gotta go, Liv.”

“Go save Dallas.”

“I miss you.” Fast, then softer, already moving. “See you tomorrow.”

I hang up and go back to the flour, still smiling.

Today is Thanksgiving, and I’m spending it with the Bakers.

My parents are in Houston, doing what they always do, a quiet dinner at two with cloth napkins and my father’s one story about the turkey he brined in 2009. I’ll see them at Christmas. When I told my mother I had somewhere to be this year, she said, “That’s nice, dear.”

I’m not sad about it. That’s the part I keep waiting to feel and don’t. My family is fine. Fine is just a smaller word than the one I want.

The bigger word is what happens at Luke’s house, and it took me a month and a lot of Dottie to understand.

Everyone left Luke, one way or another. Everyone except her. Thanksgiving at that house isn’t a holiday. It’s a headcount. Everyone who stayed, in one room.

This year they’ve counted me in.

I whip cream by hand at my counter, because if I’m bringing an ugly pie I’m bringing real cream to go on it, and I catch myself in the microwave door on the way past. Hair down, the little gold earrings my mom sent one Christmas that I’ve never had anywhere to wear. I’m wearing them to Thanksgiving with a firefighter, his grandmother, and his ten-year-old.

I set the pie carefully in the passenger seat and I call Luke to say I’m on my way.

He picks up on the second ring. Noise behind him, Bo’s voice, a pan, Dottie saying something about the oven.

“You leaving?”

“Pulling out now. I have the pie.”

“Bo will be thrilled. He’s been talking about it nonstop.” He laughs, and something clatters, and he says, half to me and half to the room, “Okay. Drive safe. See you in a bit, love you.”