“Uncle Gage doesn’t decide what we do for the holidays, Kobe,” I said, placing my hand gently on his arm until he let his hands drop to his lap.
He finally turned off the faucet, the wet squeak of the handle echoing in the small kitchen. “But she said she has to get it because she was good at the park.”
I did not want to discuss his cousin’s rewards while his own birthday party sat in ruins. I reached for the stack of mail sitting near the microwave, hoping to find something ordinary to break the tension.
Most of it was junk, coupons for lawn service and a flyer for a snow removal company. But near the bottom lay a thick envelope from Minnesota Federal Credit Union addressed to my brother.
It had been forwarded to my address by mistake, the yellow routing sticker stuck crookedly across the front. Our childhood home had been sold years ago, but some of his financial mail still drifted to my house because I had managed our mother’s accounts from this table.
