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“Grandma,” I say.

She walks to the kitchen.

I follow her. “Grandma. Is my mom coming here?”

She places the tin down and looks at me. “You know she tries to come every Christmas.”

I almost laugh. “Since when? She hasn’t for the last four years.”

“That’s not true. She came two years ago.”

Dylan walks over and leans across the counter. He picks up the tin and inspects it. “What the fuck is this thing? This is trash.”

“Maybe to you,” I say, turning back to my grandma. “Merry Christmas, Grandma.”

“Thank you for the gift.” She smiles and winks at me. “Merry Christmas.”

I look around the house for a moment. I’m not looking for anything. I tell myself I’m not. I’m just looking. At the table. At the counter behind her. At the chair by the window with her purse on it. At the top of the refrigerator, where the tin used to be. There’s nothing. And she isn’t going to go get anything, either. I can tell. She isn’t saying oh, wait, I have something for you. She didn’t get me anything. And that’s okay. I’m an adult, and she’s done enough for me. I don’t need presents. I don’t care about presents. She doesn’t have any money. I know that better than anybody. I would never, ever want her to spend money on me she doesn’t have. And she didn’t know I was coming. I told her I wasn’t. She thought I was spending Christmas somewhere else. Why would she have anything, if she didn’t think I’d be here?

I tell myself that. It’s a good reason. It’s a true one. And yet, it doesn’t go all the way down. Dylan walks back with the tin in his hands, and she watches him. I watch her eyes flick around the living room at him and his friends as they talk shit about my gift. And it isn’t about the money. I would have been happy with a card and nothing inside it. I’d have been happy with a piece of notebook paper with my name on it. It isn’t the gift. I know it isn’t the gift. It’s that nobody here thought about me.

Nobody in this house sat down in December and thought, Tessa might come. Tessa should have something. What would Tessa like. Nobody wrote my name on anything. Nobody put anything aside for me, just in case. Not because they hated me. Not because they meant to hurt me. They just… didn’t think of me at all. I was easy to forget. I’ve always been easy to forget. I made myself that way on purpose, so I wouldn’t be in anybody’s way, and I was so good at it that it worked, and now here I am in my grandma’s kitchen on Christmas, and it’s still working.

This morning, I came down a staircase in a house I’d been in for six days and found three presents with my name on them. A woman who barely knows me thought about flannel pajamas with stars on them. A man who probably hates that I’m staying at his house was thoughtful enough to gift me one of his own personal books. A boy who spent four years making me smaller gave me something I didn’t know I needed to witness––that life can be different. It can be different in so many ways, and he bought me a watch so that I remember that I have time.

All of it makes my stomach squeeze. My nose stings, and my throat goes tight and strange, and I have to look out the window over the sink at the backyard at the chain-link and the dead tomato cages under the snow, so I don’t look at my grandma.

She did nothing wrong. There’s nothing wrong about her moving on from the four years she had me and living about. If she’d screamed at me, I’d know what to do. If Dylan had grabbed my wrist, I’d know what to do. I’ve known what to do about loud things my whole life. This isn’t loud. This is nothing. Just silence. There’s a watch on my wrist ticking, small and steady, keeping time.

“I should go,” I say.

She follows behind me and hugs me one more time. It’s not a happy Christmas hug. It’s just an ordinary one. I hug her back and hold on a second too long because I love her. I do. She’s the one who took me in when I was fourteen with two trash bags on her porch. She’s the one who would cook my favorite simple meals and signed all my paperwork for school.

“Merry Christmas, Grandma,” I say before letting go.

“Merry Christmas, Tess.” She pulls back and holds my face in her cold hands. “Call me. You call me, now.”

I nod. I don’t say I will. I just nod.

“Tell my mom I said hi.”

She doesn’t say anything to that. She just nods and goes back in. But I don’t hear the door fully close. When I turn, Dylan is already hanging his arm around my neck.

“Merry Christmas, little cousin.”

I stop walking and look up at him. “What are you doing?”

“Seeing you out,” he says like I’m dumb. I can smell his scent mixed with weed and alcohol.

I glare up at him. “Is my mom really coming or are you saying that to mess with me?”

“She’s really coming,” he says easily.

I think about that for a moment. I grab his arm and push him away. “Get off of me. You stink.”

Dylan laughs and nods towards Rafe. “I bet his drugs are good.”

I shake my head. “Go back inside, Dylan.”