“Daniel! Have you lost your goddamned mind?!” Martin bellowed, marching across the dining room threshold:
“You just destroyed a twelve-thousand-dollar custom architectural door! What the hell is wrong with you, kicking my entrance open on Christmas Eve?!”
“Where is my daughter’s winter coat, Martin?” I asked.
My voice was not a shout.
It was twenty decibels of compressed, sub-zero polar diamond that caused every crystal drop on the foyer chandelier to hum with sympathetic vibration:
“Where is Sophie’s jacket?”
Gregory Collins sneered from the doorway, swirling a tumbler of scotch, his designer watch gleaming:
“Oh, look at the toolbox hero! Did the little crybaby run to her daddy because she couldn’t take a little holiday critique? She was disrespectful to the head of this family, Daniel. She questioned my father’s business acumen. When you live on family charity, you don’t lecture the people paying for your existence.”
Before Gregory could finish his sentence, Claire stepped out from the dining room.
She did not look upset. She did not look startled.
Her emerald silk dress was immaculate, her hair styled into an expensive updo, her expression carved from smooth, haughty, aristocratic porcelain.
In her right hand, she carried a chilled flute of Dom Pérignon.
In her left hand, tucked beneath her arm, was a thick, legal-sized manila document folder.
Claire crossed the Brazilian cherry floor, stopping three feet from where I stood in the melting slush. She looked down at my grease-stained flannel, down at the salt stains on my boots, and curled her lip in cold, theatrical disdain:
“I’m done being embarrassed by you, Daniel,” Claire stated, her voice ringing across the silent room so that every aunt, uncle, and cousin could hear every syllable:
“Look at you. You kick in my parents’ front door looking like an illiterate municipal ditch-digger on Christmas Eve. You bring your moody, defensive baggage of a daughter into our holiday gathering, and you make a scene because my father corrected her manners.”
