We are not a perfect family now. We are a renovated one. The cracks are still there, but the foundation is finally level. When they visited Charleston again three months ago, they paid for their own flights. They stayed in a hotel downtown. And when they came to my house for dinner, I set the table for three—not four.

Hannah wasn’t invited. This wasn’t a “family obligation.” This was a daughter and her parents.

My mother brought flowers. My father brought a lemon pie and admitted, for the first time, that the bakery wasn’t quite as good as mine. We sat. We ate. We spoke about the future instead of the bills.