I Spent Two Days Cooking Thanksgiving Dinner for My In-Laws

The drive to my mother’s house took twenty minutes.

During the entire ride, Poppy sat in the back seat munching on a dry dinner roll I had rescued from the counter at the last second, humming happily to herself.

"Are we having a picnic, Mommy?" she asked innocently as we turned down my mother’s familiar suburban street.

"Something like that, baby," I said, my hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly my fingers were white.

When I pulled into the driveway of my childhood home, the warm, yellow light was spilling from the living room windows. My mother, Helen, answered the door before I even finished knocking.

She was sixty-eight, wearing an apron covered in flour, her silver hair curling around her face.

When she saw me standing on the porch with two casserole dishes, an insulated bag, and a massive roasting pan containing a fourteen-pound turkey, she didn't ask questions.

She just stepped back and opened the door wider.

"Get in here out of the cold," she said. "And put that turkey down before you drop it on your toes."

Ten minutes later, Poppy was sitting at my old kitchen table eating a bowl of buttered noodles while my mother poured me a large glass of cheap red wine and handed it to me without a word.

I sat down at the table, my shoulders shaking slightly as the adrenaline finally began to wear off, leaving behind a hollow, exhausted numbness.

"Let me guess," my mother said gently, leaning against the counter with her own mug of tea. "Linda compared you to the ghost of Christmas past again."

"She said Ryan's pumpkin pie had a silkier texture," I whispered, staring into my wine glass. "And she told me Ryan was meticulous about checking supply lists."

Mom let out a short, sharp snort of laughter.

"Ryan was a twenty-two-year-old girl who didn't know how to boil water without scorching the pan, Stella. She ordered catering from a deli in Dublin and transferred everything into my sister-in-law's serving dishes. I watched her do it at the 2018 family reunion."

My head snapped up.

"What?"

"Oh, please," Mom waved her hand dismissively. "The girl couldn't cook to save her life. That's why Lucas used to sneak over here on Sunday afternoons to eat my pot roast. He was starving half the time they were together because Ryan was too busy posting pictures of food on Instagram to actually make any."

I stared at my mother, a strange mixture of validation and sheer absurdity washing over me.

"You knew this?"

"Of course I knew this. Lucas knew this too. But men have selective memories when they're trying to keep the peace between their mothers and their wives."

Before I could answer, headlights swept across the living room window.

A car door slammed in the driveway.

Heavy footsteps crunched across the gravel walk.

The front doorbell didn't even ring; the door swung open because my mother never locked it during the day, and Lucas stood in the doorway.

His coat was buttoned wrong—the top button shoved into the second buttonhole, making the lapels pull crookedly across his chest. He looked tired, panicked, and thoroughly chastised.