“I did.”
Another pause. Then, to my utter astonishment, a sharp, delighted chuckle crackled through the phone speaker.
“Good for you,” Grandma muttered. “I love this family, Rebecca, but sometimes they are entirely too full of themselves. Patricia has needed a reality check for thirty years, and it looks like you finally delivered it.”
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “I’m sorry you didn’t get your big reunion, Grandma.”
“Nonsense,” she snapped affectionately. “I’m eighty-six years old, my feet hurt in these shoes, and I was dreading sitting through four hours of your mother bragging about Melissa’s latest kitchen remodel. Listen to me: where are you?”
“We’re at a lakeside hotel in the Poconos. Having pancakes.”
Grandma sighed happily. “Pancakes by a lake. That sounds infinitely better than a country club parking lot. Put your mother on speaker.”
I blinked in surprise, but I picked up the phone, walked over to where my mother and sister were currently trying to calm an irate Uncle Greg, and remotely patched the call through to the family’s WhatsApp group audio chat—which everyone was frantically monitoring.
“Patricia,” Grandma’s voice boomed through the speaker, loud enough for half the parking lot to hear.
In the background, I heard my mother gasp. “M-Mom? Where are you? We’re trying to figure out—”
“Quiet down,” Grandma interrupted sharply. “You managed to alienate my favorite great-grandchildren over petty nonsense, you insulted the only granddaughter who actually cared enough to organize this entire event, and now you’re standing in a parking lot looking like fools because you took her for granted.”
“Mom, it was just—”
“Save it,” Grandma said. “I am calling a taxi. My great-granddaughter is eating pancakes by a lake, and that is precisely where I am going to spend the rest of my Sunday. The rest of you can figure out your own lunch.”
A collective gasp echoed through the group chat call.
“Grandma, wait! You can’t leave us here!” Melissa wailed in the background.
“Watch me,” Grandma replied crisply. Click.
Three hours later, a silver taxi pulled up to the porch of our lakeside hotel.
Lily and Mason raced down the steps to help Grandma out of the car, each taking one of her hands as she walked proudly toward the lobby, her cane tapping rhythmically against the stone walkway.
That evening, the four of us sat together on the hotel balcony as the sun dipped below the tree line, painting the water in brilliant shades of gold and violet.
Grandma sat wrapped in a cozy wool blanket, a cup of chamomile tea in her hands, smiling as Mason played a quiet melody on a small keyboard we’d borrowed from the hotel lobby.
My phone was completely silent. The family group chat had gone dead quiet, save for a brief text from my father asking if I could “help them mediate a refund discussion with the caterers”—to which I had replied with a simple thumbs-up emoji and nothing more.
I wasn’t angry anymore. The weight I had carried for years—the invisible obligation to keep everyone happy at my own expense—was finally gone.
Lily leaned her head against my shoulder, looking out at the lake.
“Mom?” she whispered.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Are we ever going to a big family reunion again?”
I smiled, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, knowing that from now on, our family was right here.
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