Karen appeared in the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“Packing dinner.”
“Rick.”
I kept working.
“I heard you tell my father he wasn’t welcome in his son’s home on Thanksgiving because he smells like the work he spent fifty years doing.”
She stared at me.
“I’m not sitting down to dinner after that.”
“So you’re ruining Thanksgiving?”
“No.”
I covered the sweet potatoes with foil.
“I’m having Thanksgiving with my father.”
Karen told me I was being childish.
She said her parents would be embarrassed.
She said I couldn’t simply take the food and leave.
She said I was making a mistake.
I listened while packing everything into my truck.
But I didn’t argue.
There was nothing left to debate.
I drove to Dad’s house.
The trip usually took twenty-two minutes.
That morning, with most people already where they planned to spend the holiday, it took seventeen.
