**PART 3**
“We’re leaving,” Marcus said. He didn’t look at his mother again. He reached down, grabbed my coat from the back of the chair, and held out his hand to me.
I stood up, smoothed down the front of my sweater, and picked up my purse. Arthur kept his eyes fixed on his water glass, shaking his head slowly from side to side. We walked down the hallway together, the heavy oak front door opening before us into the cool evening air.
We drove in silence for the first ten minutes, the heater humming softly against our shins as the town lights blurred past our windows. Marcus kept his hands gripped at ten and two on the steering wheel, his knuckles white under the dash lights.
“I am so sorry,” he whispered finally, his voice cracking slightly as we turned onto the bypass. “I swear to God, I had no idea. If I had known she pulled that—”
“I know you didn’t, Marcus,” I said, reaching over to place my hand gently over his clenched fist. He turned his hand over, tangling his fingers tightly with mine.
“We are not doing holidays there anymore,” he said, his jaw set hard as he stared down the empty highway. “Not Thanksgiving, not Christmas, not ever again unless she apologizes and means it. And even then, we host.”
“Sounds fair,” I told him.
Ten minutes later, he pulled the sedan into the gravel lot of a twenty-four-hour diner on the edge of town, right beneath the glowing amber sign that buzzed against the night sky. We sat together in a cracked vinyl booth near the back, ordering a simple plate of hot fries and burgers, sharing them off the same paper basket in comfortable, unburdened solidarity while the city slept outside.
