“And now that we have you here,” Jamie continued, “there’s something else we’d like to share with you.”
Standing at the entrance to the foyer, I was behind him, with the perfect view of his audience as he said this. The response was two-pronged: first, hopeful expressions—raised eyebrows, mouths falling open, hands to chests—followed by everyone looking at Cora at once. Oh, shit, I thought.
My sister turned pink instantly, then pointedly took a sip from the wineglass in her hand before forcing a smile. By then, Jamie had realized his mistake.
“It’s about UMe,” he said quickly, and everyone slowly directed their attention back to him. “Our new advertising campaign. It rolls out officially tomorrow, all over the country. But you get to see it here first.”
Jamie reached behind a chair, pulling out a square piece of cardboard with the ad I’d seen blown up on it. I looked at Cora again, but she’d disappeared into the kitchen, her glass abandoned on a bookcase.
“I hope you like it,” Jamie said, holding the picture up in front of him. “And, um, won’t want to sue.”
I slipped through the foyer, missing the Hunters’ initial reactions, although I did hear some gasps and shrieks, followed by more applause, as I entered the kitchen where Cora was sliding rolls into the oven, her back to me. She didn’t turn around as she said, “Told you.”
I glanced behind me, wondering how on earth she could have known for sure it was me. “He felt horrible,” I said. “You could tell.”
“I know.” She shut the oven, tossing a potholder onto the island. From the living room, I could hear people talking over one another, their voices excited. Cora glanced over at the noise. “Sounds like they like it.”
“Did he really think they wouldn’t?”
She shrugged. “People are weird about family stuff, you know? ”
“Really?” I said as I slid onto a stool by the island. “I wouldn’t know a thing about that.”
“Me either,” she agreed. “Our family is perfect.”
We both laughed at this, although not nearly loudly enough to drown out the merriment from the next room. Then Cora turned back to the oven, peering in through the glass door. “So,” I said, “speaking of family. What does it mean to you?”
She looked at me over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s a project for school. I’m supposed to ask everybody.”
“Oh.” Then she was quiet for a moment, her back still to me. “What are people saying?”
“So far, different things,” I told her. “I haven’t made a lot of headway, to be honest.”
She moved down to the stove, lifting up a lid on a pot and examining the contents. “Well, I’m sure my definition is probably similar to yours. It would have to be, right?”
“I guess,” I said. “But then again, you have another family now.”
We both looked into the living room. From my angle, I could see Jamie had put the blown-up ad on the coffee table, and everyone else was gathered around. “I guess I do,” she said. “But maybe that’s part of it, you know? That you’re not supposed to have just one.”
“Meaning what?”
“Well,” she said, adjusting a pot lid, “I have my family of origin, which is you and Mom. And then Jamie’s family, my family of marriage. And hopefully, I’ll have another family, as well. Our family, that we make. Me and Jamie.”
Now I felt bad, bringing this up so soon after Jamie’s gaffe. “You will,” I said.
She turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. “I hope so. But that’s just the thing, right? Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else. Even that picture of Jamie’s family was only the true representation for that one day. By the next, something had probably changed. It had to.”
In the living room, I heard a burst of laughter. “That’s a good definition,” I said.
“Yeah? ”
I nodded. “The best yet.”
Later, when the kitchen had filled up with people looking for more wine, and children chasing Roscoe, I looked across all the chaos at Cora, thinking that of course you would assume our definitions would be similar, since we had come from the same place. But this wasn’t actually true. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone’s eyes. Our definitions were as different as we were ourselves.
I looked into the living room, where Jamie’s mom was now alone on the couch, the ad spread out on the table in front of her. When I joined her, she immediately scooted over, and for a moment we both studied the ad in silence.
“Must be kind of weird,” I said finally. “Knowing this is going to be out there for the whole world to see.”
“I suppose.” She smiled. Of all of them, to me she looked the most like Jamie. “At the same time, I doubt anyone would recognize me. It was a long time ago.”
I looked down at the picture, finding her in the center in her white dress. “Who were these women?” I asked, pointing at the elderly women on each side of her.
“Ah.” She leaned forward, a little closer. “My great-aunts. That’s Carol on the far left, and Jeannette, next to her. Then Alice on my other side.”