By 2023, our family holidays had reorganized themselves in a way that nobody ever said out loud. My grandmother started having Thanksgiving at my aunt's house — fifty minutes farther away, inconvenient, small — and my brother's family was not invited. My sister started having Christmas Eve at her house and started telling my brother's family that her in-laws were "taking over this year," which was a lie we all knew was a lie. My mother continued to host, doggedly, what she called "the full family" gatherings, but she started inviting Grant and Emma to smaller events instead — coffee on a Saturday, lunch after church — where there were fewer things to break and fewer cousins to bite. We all did this. My brother did not notice. Or more accurately — I think he noticed, and he chose to believe it was about scheduling. It was not about scheduling. It was about exhaustion. It was about the fact that none of us could stand another holiday spent apologizing to our grandmother while my brother chuckled and said "they're just boys, they're just kids."