“Traitor,” Cora muttered.

“Okay. Enough.” I got out of the closet, brushing myself off, then turned around to face her. “This is happening. So you need to go downstairs, face your fears, and make the best of it, and everything will be okay.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “When did you suddenly become so positive?”

“Just get out of there.”

A sigh, and then she emerged, getting to her feet and adjusting her skirt. I shut the closet door, and for a moment we both stood there, in front of the full-length mirror, staring at our reflections. Finally I said, “Remember Thanksgiving at our house?”

“No,” she said softly. “Not really.”

“Me neither,” I said. “Let’s go.”

It wasn’t so much that I was positive. I just wasn’t fully subscribing to such a negative way of thinking anymore.

That morning, when Cora had been in serious food-prep freak-out mode—covered in flour, occasionally bursting into tears, waving a spoon at anyone who came too close—all I’d wanted was a reason to escape the house. Luckily, I got a good one.

“Hey,” Nate said from the kitchen as I eased in through his sliding-glass door, carrying the four pies stacked on two cookie sheets. “For me? You shouldn’t have.”

“If you even as much as nip off a piece of crust,” I warned him, carrying them carefully to the stove, “Cora will eviscerate you. With an eggbeater, most likely.”

“Wow,” he said, recoiling slightly. “That’s graphic.”

“Consider yourself warned.” I put the pies down. “Okay to go ahead and preheat?”

“Sure. It’s all yours.”

I pushed the proper buttons to set the oven, then turned and leaned against it, watching him as he flipped through a thick stack of papers, jotting notes here and there. “Big day, huh? ”

“Huge,” he said, glancing up at me. “Half our clients are out of town and need their houses or animals checked on, the other half have relatives visiting and need twice as much stuff done as usual. Plus there are those who ordered their entire dinners and want them delivered.”

“Sounds crazy,” I said.

“It isn’t,” he replied, jotting something else down. “It just requires military precision.”

“Nate?” I heard his dad call out from down a hallway. “What time is the Chambells’ pickup?”

“Eleven,” Nate said. “I’m leaving in ten minutes.”

“Make it five. You don’t know how backed up they’ll be. Do you have all the keys you need?”

“Yes.” Nate reached over to a drawer by the sink, pulling out a key ring and dropping it on the island, where it landed with a clank.

“Double-check,” Mr. Cross said. “I don’t want to have to come back here if you end up stuck somewhere.”

Nate nodded, making another note as a door slammed shut in another part of the house.

“He sounds stressed,” I said.

“It’s his first big holiday since we started the business,” he said. “He signed up a lot of new people just for today. But he’ll relax once we get out there and start getting things done.”

Maybe this was true. Still, I could hear Mr. Cross muttering to himself in the distance, the noise not unlike that my own mother would make, banging around before she reluctantly headed off to work. “So when, in the midst of all this, do you get to eat Thanksgiving dinner?”

“We don’t,” he said. “Unless hitting the drive-through at Double Burger with someone else’s turkey and potatoes in the backseat counts.”

“That,” I said, “is just plain sad.”

“I’m not much for holidays,” he said with a shrug.

“Really.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Why is that surprising?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I just expected someone who was, you know, so friendly and social to be a big fan of the whole family-gathering thing. I mean, Jamie is.”

“Yeah? ”

I nodded. “In fact, I’m supposed to be making up my thankful list as we speak.”

“Your what?”

“Exactly,” I said, pointing at him. “Apparently, it’s a list of the things you’re thankful for, to be read aloud at dinner. Which is something we never did. Ever.”

He flipped through the pages again. “Neither did we. I mean, back when we were a we.”

I could hear Mr. Cross talking now, his voice bouncing down the hall. He sounded much more cheerful than before, and I figured he had to be talking to a customer. “When did your parents split, anyway?”

Nate nodded, picking up the key ring and flipping through it. “When I was ten. You?”

“Five,” I said as the oven beeped behind me. Instantly, I thought of Roscoe, huddling in my closet. “My dad’s pretty much been out of the picture ever since.”

“My mom lives in Phoenix,” he said, sliding a key off the ring. “I moved out there with her after the divorce. But then she got remarried and had my stepsisters, and it was too much to handle.”

“What was?”

“Me,” he said. “I was in middle school, mouthing off, a pain in her ass, and she just wanted to do the baby thing. So year before last, she kicked me out and sent me back here.” I must have looked surprised, because he said, “What? You’re not the only one with a checkered past, you know.”