Linda spent Christmas with her sister.Zara found out from a text, not from Linda directly but relayed through the aunt, a general message sent to the wider family letting everyone know the arrangements for the holiday. Linda would be at her sister's from the twenty-third through to the new year. Anyone who wanted to visit was welcome.Zara read the message three times.She was not invited specifically. She was also not excluded specifically. It was the kind of ambiguous inclusion that Linda's family had always practiced, the wide net of an extended family gathering where anyone with the right blood was theoretically welcome and the specific dynamics of who actually wanted to be in the same room were left to sort themselves out privately.She did not go.She spent Christmas Eve with Ethan in her flat, the two of them cooking a meal that was too elaborate for two people and eating far too much of it, and on Christmas morning they opened the small gifts they had bought each other, a set
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