Chapter 2 - THE CHRISTMAS LAUREN SAID EMMA KEPT RUINING
Lauren had been saying Emma ruined things for years.
At first, she disguised it as humor.
When Emma was four and cried through a restaurant dinner because she had an ear infection, Lauren said, “There goes Mommy’s birthday.”
When Emma was six and got sick during a weekend trip, Lauren posted a joking photo online about children destroying vacations.
When she was seven and became overwhelmed at a crowded Christmas party, Lauren told everyone, “Emma always finds a way to make holidays about her.”
People laughed.
I did too once.
I still hated myself for that.
Lauren was two years older than me and had always been the person in our family who could make cruelty sound entertaining. Growing up, she could insult somebody and somehow leave them wondering whether they were humorless for being hurt.
Our mother called her spirited.
Our father called her blunt.
I eventually learned another word.
Mean.
Emma’s father, Kevin, died when she was three.
A heart defect nobody knew he had.
He collapsed at work on a Tuesday morning and was gone before Lauren reached the hospital.
For the first year afterward, I understood everything.
The anger.
The exhaustion.
The impatience.
Lauren had become a thirty-year-old widow with a toddler and a mortgage.
I helped constantly.
Picked Emma up from daycare.
Stayed overnight when Lauren needed to work.
Bought groceries.
Sat on the bathroom floor while my sister cried because she could not understand why everyone else’s life had kept moving.
But years passed.
Grief changed.
Lauren did not.
She began dating again, which I encouraged. She deserved a life beyond loss.
Then she met Mark.
He lived outside Indianapolis, traveled constantly for work, and seemed to like children in theory more than in practice.
Emma made him uncomfortable.
She was shy.
Needed routine.
Asked too many questions.
Did not enjoy long dinners with adults.
Lauren began describing those things as problems.
“She needs to grow up.”
“She’s nine,” I said.
“She acts six.”
“No. She acts nine.”
That argument happened so often that eventually Lauren stopped discussing Emma with me.
Then the holidays arrived.
Lauren wanted to spend Christmas with Mark’s family in Indiana.
Emma wanted Christmas morning at home.
That was all.
Not rebellion.
Not sabotage.
A nine-year-old girl who had lost her father wanted to wake up in the house where she remembered him.
Lauren treated it like betrayal.
Three days before Christmas, Emma called me from her bedroom.
“Do you have your little tree up?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see it?”
“Of course.”
A pause.
Then she whispered, “Mom says if I don’t go with Mark, she won’t have Christmas because of me.”
I sat up.
“What?”
“She says I always make things hard.”
“Emma, listen to me. Adults decide their own holidays. That is not your job.”
She became quiet.
“Can I come to your house?”
I wanted to say yes immediately.
But Lauren was her mother.
We still had boundaries then.
“I’ll talk to your mom.”
I called Lauren.
She exploded.
“You are constantly undermining me.”
“She called me crying.”
“She knows exactly who to call when she wants attention.”
“She’s nine.”
“And manipulative.”
That word disturbed me.
“Lauren.”
“You don’t live with her.”
“No. But I know her.”
“You get the fun aunt version. I get everything else.”
Then she said something I did not understand until later.
“Maybe you should get everything else.”
May you like
She hung up.
Two days later, Emma was standing alone in freezing rain.
