A fifty-pound mix of something golden and something confused.
One ear stood straight up.
The other never did.
During her first week, she followed me room to room like a small anxious shadow.
By the second, she had claimed the sunny kitchen spot and stopped flinching when I closed a door.
I understood her more than I would ever admit.
In November, Priya told me the Northeast program had exceeded its targets and she had nominated me for a national nonprofit leadership award.
I cried in her office, embarrassed.
She handed me a tissue.
“You did this. You were always this person. You just got to be her out loud.”
Then, before I quite realized it, December came again.
On Christmas Eve, my townhouse smelled of cinnamon, pine, and roasting ham.
Dana arrived first with wine and a ridiculous sweater covered in tiny reindeer.
Priya came with her husband and a tin of shortbread.
Tess came too.
Glowing.
She pulled me aside in the kitchen and whispered that she had left her boyfriend in the spring, moved into her own apartment, and had never felt lighter.
“You said to learn where I stood,” she told me. “I did. It was terrible. And then it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
I hugged her harder than a boss probably should.
Margaret and Robert arrived at six.
Robert carried a poinsettia the size of a small child.
Margaret carried a covered dish.
She set it on the counter and lifted the lid.
The cranberry dish.
The same one she served the Christmas Eve when my husband brought his girlfriend to dinner and the truth emerged over dessert.
“I have something for you,” she said.
She pulled a small yellowed index card from her purse.
Old, slanted handwriting.
