Chapter 3

New Year's Eve arrived the way the whole month of December had arrived — in a blur of small humiliations that Ruth had stopped fighting.

The invitations had gone out in mid-December. Vanessa had sent them from Ruth's kitchen counter, sitting on one of the white stools, tapping at her phone while Ruth washed the breakfast dishes.

"I've got everyone coming," Vanessa said. "My parents, my sister and her husband, the kids, your aunt Marie, the Whitfields, Uncle Pete—"

"Fourteen people," Ruth said. She was not asking. She had counted.

"Fourteen," Vanessa confirmed. "It's a big one. I'm going to do a standing rib roast."

"That's ambitious."

Vanessa looked up from her phone. "We can handle it. It's a nice tradition, right? New Year's Eve at the family home."

Ruth did not say anything. She turned off the water and dried her hands on a towel — a new towel, gray, one of the set of twelve — and she looked at Vanessa, and she thought about the staircase, and the word "realistic," and the word "die," and the word "I know."

"I'm not cooking."

The words came out of her mouth before she had decided to say them. Vanessa's phone stopped moving. She looked up at Ruth, and her face was blank for a moment, and then it arranged itself into a smile.

"You don't have to," Vanessa said. "We can do it together. I'll handle the roast, you can do the sides. It'll be fun."

"No."

"Ruth—"

"This is your party. You invited them. You cook."

Vanessa's smile flickered. "Anna. It's Anna. You know that's what everybody calls me."

It was true. Vanessa had always been called Anna by her family — a nickname from childhood, a name that Ruth had never once used, because Ruth had never been invited into the circle where that name lived. Ruth had always called her Vanessa, and Vanessa had never corrected her, and now she was using the name as a cudgel.

"Vanessa," Ruth said, pronouncing it carefully, "is your name. I will be here. I will not be cooking."

"You're being dramatic."

"I'm being clear."