he photo came in at 6:48 on Christmas Eve, and I zoomed in on it three separate times before I let myself believe what I was seeing.
My whole family, gathered around Mama’s oak table back in Hazel Crossing, Missouri. The good tablecloth was out, the one with the pheasants stitched into the corners that only ever came off the shelf twice a year. A ham sat in the middle with cloves pressed into it in neat rows. My mother, Evangelina, had her hair done and her church pearls on, laughing at something off camera. My father sat at the head of the table in his good flannel, the one he saved for Christmas and funerals, holding his coffee mug up like he was mid toast. My younger sister, Lysandra, was wedged in next to him, glowing, her hand looped through the arm of some boy I didn’t recognize. Aunts. Uncles. Our neighbors the Pruett family, who’d been coming to our Christmas table since before I could walk.
