That was easier than what I actually felt, which was not only the hurt of this specific cancellation but the hurt of every cancellation before it, the accumulated weight of thirty-one years of fine, of adjusting, of saying all good when the truth was the opposite and the opposite was not something I had learned to say out loud to the people I was saying it to.
I removed three place settings from the table.
My mother. My father. Brooke.
I carried them to the pantry.
Under a stack of papers on the counter was the white envelope from the production company. The broadcast schedule. The air date and time. The confirmation that my house was the final segment of the Christmas Eve special.
I held the envelope.
I had considered telling my parents about the program. I had thought through the telling several times over the preceding weeks and I had always arrived at the same conclusion, which was that telling them before they came would create a version of the visit that was about the program, about the external
