Every Christmas, my brother Jason won our family’s ridiculous “Best Son” trophy while everyone joked that I needed to “come down from space.” Then, on Christmas Eve, a woman called and said, “I’m your brother’s other wife.” I told nobody. The next afternoon, Jason stood beneath that four-foot trophy giving a speech about integrity and family values when the doorbell rang—and his two-year-old son walked straight into the room…

 

At 8:47 on Christmas Eve, a woman I had never met called my apartment and introduced herself as my brother’s wife.

I was standing beside a crooked artificial Christmas tree I had assembled after two bourbons and a disagreement with the tree stand that I believe I technically lost. On my coffee table sat microwave popcorn, several research printouts, and a computer simulation of atmospheric conditions on a planet 124 light-years away. Five minutes earlier, that planet had been the most confusing thing in my life.

Then the phone rang.

“Hi, is this Nathaniel Brooks?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Rebecca.”

She sounded nervous but strangely formal, like she was calling to confirm an appointment.

“I’m your brother’s wife.”

I sat down.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “My brother’s wife is named Mandy.”

There was a pause.

“Yes,” Rebecca said quietly. “That’s why I’m calling.”

I looked at the bowl of popcorn.

One piece rolled over the edge and landed on the carpet. For some reason, I watched it instead of speaking.

Finally I said, “So Jason has two wives.”

“Legally.”

That word bothered me almost as much as everything else.

My brother Jason treated paperwork as though it were an infectious disease. He once drove with an expired registration for seven months because the state website asked him to reset his password.

“You’re legally married to him?”

“Yes.”

“While he’s legally married to Mandy?”

“Yes.”

“Are we using the normal definition of legally?”

Rebecca laughed once, but there was no joy in it.

Then I heard a small voice in the background.

“Mommy?”

Rebecca covered the phone briefly.

“It’s okay, sweetheart.”

I sat straighter.

“Was that a child?”

“My son.”

“How old?”

“Two.”

I already knew the next answer before I asked.

“Jason’s?”

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes.

Somewhere, God had apparently decided our family Christmas needed stronger ratings.

My name is Nathaniel Brooks, though everyone calls me Nate. I was forty-three that Christmas, unmarried, and a senior research scientist at an aerospace institute outside Denver. My work involved planetary atmospheres, telescope observation planning, and mathematical models that my family summarized as “Nate looks at stars.”

My father would ask, “Still staring at space?”

“Mostly spectral data.”

“Right. Stars.”

My mother, Susan, called me her little spaceman even though I was six-foot-two, gray at the temples, and old enough to complain about property taxes.

Jason was forty-six.

He worked in commercial insurance, drove a leased Mercedes, and could turn buying a new grill into a presentation on leadership and long-term vision. He was handsome, successful, married to Mandy for fourteen years, and father to their daughters, Madison and Haley.

Our parents adored Jason.

They loved me too, but somehow affection in the Brooks family had acquired a scoreboard.

Eleven years earlier, after several glasses of wine, Dad ordered a four-foot plastic trophy online. It had fake marble, gold columns, winged angels, a bald eagle, a mysterious soccer ball, and at the top a gold man holding another smaller gold object nobody had ever identified.

The plaque read: Brooks family excellence.

Dad called it the Christmas Achievement Cup.

Everybody else called it Best Son.

Every Christmas, each adult presented five achievements from the year. Salary increases. Promotions. Home improvements. Volunteer work. Investments. Weight loss. Children’s accomplishments, which always felt like statistical fraud because one cousin once earned points because his daughter handled braces “with maturity.”

Mom and Dad awarded the points.

Jason almost always won.

One year, I co-authored research that helped identify water vapor in the atmosphere of a distant exoplanet.

Dad squinted at my presentation.

“So you found fog?”

“Not exactly.”

Two points.

That same Christmas, Jason received six points for installing shelving in his garage.

When I complained, Mom patted my arm.

“Nate, sweetheart, you need to come down from space sometime.”

Jason laughed so hard he nearly spilled his wine.

That was our family dynamic.

Not vicious enough to walk away from.

Just committed to turning Christmas into a performance review with ham.

Rebecca knew about none of that when she called me.

She told me she had married Jason three years earlier in Nevada after he claimed he and Mandy were divorced. Their son had been born afterward. Rebecca said she had begun suspecting something six weeks earlier after Jason left his tablet at her house and a message appeared from Madison about a school project.

She searched Madison’s name.

Then Mandy’s.

Then ours.

Suddenly she found years of family photographs, anniversaries, vacations, Christmases, and one particularly unfortunate photo of Jason holding the Best Son trophy.

“He told me that trophy was a community leadership award,” Rebecca said.

I lowered my head into my hand.

“Of course he did.”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

“Does Mandy know?”

“No.”

“My parents?”

“No.”

“Anybody?”

“His friend Logan.”

Naturally.

Logan was the sort of man who once referred to cheating as “keeping your options diversified.”

Rebecca hesitated.

“Are you going to your parents’ Christmas tomorrow?”

I looked at the gold invitation stuck to my refrigerator.

Brooks family Christmas classic. Festive attire mandatory. Achievement folders encouraged.

“Yes.”

“I’m coming.”

I sat upright.

“With your son?”

“Yes.”

“Rebecca—”

“I’m sorry to involve you. But I can’t let him lie to everybody again.”

I did not tell her not to come.

I also did not warn Jason.

Partly because I had not seen the documents myself and some small part of me hoped this was a catastrophic misunderstanding.

But there was another reason.

My whole life, somebody had softened the landing for Jason.

Mom explained him.

Dad celebrated him.

Mandy organized the home around him.

His coworkers admired him.

Even I usually responded to his arrogance with jokes because sarcasm was easier than conflict.

For once, I wanted to see what happened if nobody caught him.

Christmas morning, I reached my parents’ house nine minutes early.

Mom opened the door wearing a green dress and a headband with tiny Christmas trees bouncing on springs.

“You’re late.”

“I’m early.”

“Jason’s been here forty minutes.”

Of course he had.

Dad appeared behind her wearing a Rudolph sweater.

“Spaceman!”

“Merry Christmas, Dad.”

“Made it back to Earth?”

“Traffic near Jupiter.”

He laughed much harder than that deserved and hugged me.

The living room smelled like cinnamon, glazed ham, and whatever essential oil Mom had decided smelled like Bethlehem.

Jason stood beside the fireplace in a red velvet blazer, white shirt, and gold pocket square.

He was already holding the trophy.

Not standing near it.

Holding it.

Mandy stood beside him in a cream sweater. Their daughters were on the sofa arguing over a tablet.

Jason raised the trophy when he saw me.

“Look who finally landed.”

I hugged Mandy first.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Nate.”

She looked tired.

Not normal Christmas-with-in-laws tired.

Something heavier.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

Jason answered before she could say more.

“She’s stressed about the kitchen remodel.”

Mandy looked at him.

“We haven’t decided to remodel.”

“We basically have.”

“We looked at countertops.”

“Exactly.”

I noticed then that Jason kept checking his phone.

Christmas was normally his Super Bowl. The previous year, he ignored a call from his boss during trophy scoring because Dad was awarding points for refinancing his mortgage.

“Priorities,” Jason had said.

That morning, he checked his screen six times before lunch.

I knew why.

Lunch started at one.

Dad carved the ham with a ceremonial knife nobody had sharpened since the Clinton administration. After fifteen minutes, Mom whispered, “Frank, should we use the real knife?”

Dad looked offended.

“Tradition, Susan.”

So we watched him saw through dinner like a prisoner tunneling out with a spoon.

Then came Christmas crackers.

Gratitude cards.

Family trivia.

Grandpa’s annual poem about togetherness.

Finally, at 3:15, Dad clapped his hands.

“Ladies and gentlemen.”

I closed my eyes.

The Christmas Achievement Classic.

Everybody moved into the living room.

Mom dimmed the lights.

Dad switched on the battery-powered lights wrapped around the giant trophy. Red. Green. Red. Green.

The eagle’s left wing had been glued back on after a dog-related incident in 2019. The little gold man at the top leaned slightly forward as if ashamed to participate.

Dad stood beside a whiteboard.

“Same categories. Financial achievement. Professional achievement. Personal growth. Family achievement. Miscellaneous excellence.”

“What is miscellaneous excellence?” I asked.

Mom frowned.

“You ask that every year.”

“Because nobody has ever answered.”

Jason leaned over.

“It’s for people who actually do things.”

“Thank you, Confucius.”

The competition began.

A cousin in Florida called in by speakerphone and earned twenty-seven points for becoming partner at her firm, running a half marathon, renovating her kitchen, and volunteering.

My aunt earned twenty-one.

Cousin Kevin got nineteen.

Then came me.

Dad smiled.

“Ground control to Major Nate.”

Everybody laughed.

I stood with my card.

“My team published three peer-reviewed studies.”

Dad wrote something.

“We also contributed atmospheric analysis to two telescope observation programs and developed a modeling process that cut certain simulation times by roughly thirty percent.”

Jason raised a hand.

“Does that make Wi-Fi faster?”

“No.”

“Then explain it to normal people.”

I looked at him.

“I make computers predict alien weather.”

The room exploded.

Dad bent over laughing.

Mom wiped her eyes.

“Alien weather.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Nathaniel.”

Dad eventually gave me twenty-two points.

Then Mom smiled sympathetically.

“You know your problem?”

“I suspect you’re about to tell me.”

“You’re forty-three. You live alone. You study places nobody can ever visit. Meanwhile Jason is building something tangible.”

Jason straightened his velvet jacket.

“You’ll see.”

His presentation began at four.

He had slides.

Of course he had slides.

The first showed Jason leaning against his Mercedes beneath the words:

Jason Brooks: a year of intentional growth.

Mandy closed her eyes.

I leaned toward her.

“Did you know about this?”

“No.”

“Want to leave?”

“Yes.”

His first achievement was a fourteen-percent increase in regional sales.

Eight points.

Leadership council.

Six points.

Coaching Madison’s soccer team.

“You coached three games,” Mandy said.

“I was assistant coach.”

“You brought oranges.”

“Nutrition is part of coaching.”

Four points.

Then he claimed “strategic home improvement planning” because he and Mandy had looked at granite samples once.

“We haven’t renovated anything,” Mandy said.

Jason smiled.

“We developed the vision.”

Mom nodded thoughtfully.

“Vision matters.”

Three points.

I nearly inhaled a cheese cube.

Then Jason clicked to the family category.

A beach photograph appeared behind him: Jason, Mandy, Madison, and Haley in matching white shirts.

Family first.

His voice changed.

Softer.

Earnest.

“This year reminded me that success means nothing without family.”

Mom put one hand over her heart.

Jason continued.

“You can earn money. You can chase promotions and professional recognition.”

He glanced at me.

“But if you’re not building a legacy at home, what’s the point?”

Mandy watched him carefully.

Jason rested one hand against his chest.

“Being a husband and father is my greatest achievement.”

The doorbell rang.

Once.

Nobody moved.

Then again.

Mom frowned.

“Who delivers on Christmas?”

“I’ll get it.”

I walked into the foyer.

Through the narrow glass beside the front door stood a woman in a dark blue coat.

Rebecca.

Beside her was a little boy wearing a red knit hat and holding a plastic dinosaur.

My stomach dropped.

Until that second, some stubborn part of me had hoped she had been confused.

Maybe Jason had dated her.

Maybe “wife” was being used creatively.

Then the boy looked up.

I saw Jason’s dark eyebrows.

Jason’s cleft chin.

Jason’s ears, the same slightly prominent ears Grandma used to call “handles.”

I opened the door.

Rebecca looked terrified.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

The boy held up his dinosaur.

“He’s a T-Rex.”

I nodded.

“Excellent choice.”

From the living room, Jason’s voice carried down the hallway.

“A man’s word is really all he has.”

Rebecca heard it.

So did I.

She looked at me.

I said, “Your timing is remarkable.”

She whispered, “So I’ve been told.”

Then her son slipped past us.

He stomped the snow from his boots exactly as his mother instructed—tiny stomp, tiny stomp—and ran straight into the living room.

Children possess an astonishing instinct for entering rooms at the precise worst moment.

He stopped beside the glowing four-foot trophy.

“Wow.”

Everybody turned.

Jason froze beneath the television.

Behind him, his final slide still read:

Integrity. Commitment. Legacy.

Dad looked at me.

“Nate?”

I raised both hands.

“Not mine.”

Mom stared at the child.

“Whose little boy is that?”

Then Rebecca walked into the room.

Jason’s face lost all its color.

Mandy slowly stood.

Rebecca stopped beside her son.

Jason opened his mouth.

Closed it.

The boy pointed at him.

“Daddy!”

My father dropped the whiteboard marker.

It bounced once on the hardwood.

Nobody moved to pick it up.

Mom made a noise I had never heard from a human being before.

Jason whispered, “Rebecca.”

Mandy turned toward him.

“You know her?”

“No.”

Rebecca blinked.

“You just said my name.”

Jason actually looked offended that logic had been introduced.

“I mean, obviously I know who she is.”

“You slept at my house four nights ago.”

Mandy’s face went still.

“Who is she, Jason?”

He adjusted his red velvet jacket.

That tiny movement told me more about my brother than anything else that afternoon.

When frightened, Jason still wanted to look presentable.

Rebecca answered for him.

“I’m his wife.”

Nobody laughed.

Nobody teased me about alien weather.

Nobody told me to come back down to Earth.

For the first time all Christmas, every person in that room was standing on exactly the same ground.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2

Jason tried denial first, but not the ordinary kind. He admitted Rebecca existed, admitted the relationship, admitted their son, and even admitted the ceremony in Nevada while somehow insisting that the word wife remained negotiable.

Rebecca reached into her purse.

“I brought the certificate.”

“Rebecca, not here.”

She looked around at the Christmas tree, the trophy, Mandy, their daughters, and our parents.

“Where would you prefer, Jay? Your third house?”

Dad whispered, “Third?”

“I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “At this point I’m open to surprises.”

She placed a certified marriage certificate on the coffee table.

Then their son’s birth certificate.

Father: Jason Michael Brooks.

Mandy picked up the marriage certificate.

“When?”

Jason said nothing.

Rebecca answered.

“Three years ago.”

Madison, Jason’s twelve-year-old daughter, made a small sound from the sofa.

That changed the room.

Up until then, the absurdity had given me somewhere to hide. The red blazer. The trophy. Jason presenting integrity beneath PowerPoint slides while his other family entered through the foyer.

Then I looked at Madison and Haley.

Adults create elaborate lies.

Children eventually have to stand underneath them when they collapse.

Mandy stared at Jason.

“Three years?”

He moved toward her.

“Mand, listen—”

“Don’t.”

“It wasn’t supposed to become a marriage.”

Rebecca crossed her arms.

“I would also enjoy hearing that explanation.”

Jason looked around the room as if somebody might rescue him.

Nobody did.

Finally he said, “Things got complicated.”

Rebecca let out one exhausted laugh.

“You filed taxes with me.”

Dad’s head snapped up.

“You what?”

Jason rubbed his forehead.

“I didn’t exactly—”

“You filed taxes with your other wife?” Dad asked.

Mandy closed her eyes.

“Frank, please stop calling her ‘the other wife’ like we’re doing inventory.”

I covered my mouth.

Mom pointed at me.

“Nathaniel. Do not laugh.”

“I’m experiencing symptoms.”

Jason glared at me.

Then Rebecca explained everything.

She had met him at a conference. Jason claimed he was separated and later divorced. He told her Mandy had emotionally left the marriage years earlier.

Mandy stared at him.

“I made your lunch every morning.”

“I told him that seemed unusual,” Rebecca said.

Everybody looked at her.

She shrugged faintly.

“I believed him longer than I should have.”

Six weeks earlier, Jason left his tablet at Rebecca’s apartment. A message arrived from Madison about school. Rebecca searched the name, then Mandy’s, then our family.

She found vacations.

Anniversaries.

Christmases.

And Jason proudly holding the Brooks Family Christmas Achievement Cup.

I leaned closer.

“That picture made you suspicious?”

“He said it was a community leadership award.”

For one second, even Mandy forgot to cry.

“A what?”

Rebecca almost smiled.

“Community leadership.”

Jason muttered, “It was easier.”

I sat down because my knees had stopped cooperating.

For eleven years, I had hated that ridiculous trophy.

At that moment, I almost wanted to kiss it.

Then Rebecca’s little boy grabbed one of the blinking lights.

Jason snapped, “Don’t touch that.”

The child recoiled.

Every adult turned toward Jason.

Mandy stared at him in disbelief.

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

“I’m not worried about the trophy.”

“You just yelled at your secret son for touching Best Son.”

A laugh escaped me.

One terrible bark.

I tried turning it into a cough.

Dad gave me a look.

“Sorry.”

The toddler reached again.

This time the entire trophy moved.

Dad lunged.

Too late.

Four feet of plastic family validation tilted in slow motion. One gold angel struck Jason’s shoulder. A column detached. The eagle spun across the rug, and the little figure from the top landed directly in a bowl of mashed potatoes on a side table.

The boy shouted, “Crash!”

Nobody moved.

Then Dad whispered, “The trophy.”

The child clapped.

I laughed so hard I had to sit on the arm of the sofa.

Mandy started laughing too, but tears were running down her face.

Mom stared at the wreckage.

“Eleven years.”

“Twenty-seven,” Dad corrected automatically.

“The game is twenty-seven. Trophy is eleven.”

Mandy wiped her eyes.

“Susan, your son has two wives.”

Mom pointed at Jason.

“And that is not one of our traditions.”

That finished me.

For several minutes, grief and absurdity occupied the same room.

Eventually Rebecca showed messages Jason had sent only days earlier.

Miss you.

Love you both.

After Christmas we’ll talk about our future.

Mandy read them once.

Then she handed the phone back.

“Four days ago?”

Jason opened his mouth.

She raised one finger.

He closed it.

For perhaps the first time in his adult life, my brother obeyed someone without turning it into a discussion.

Rebecca looked at Mandy.

“I’m sorry.”

Mandy studied her.

“Did you know?”

“Not until six weeks ago.”

“And you waited?”

“I have a two-year-old. I needed to understand what was real before I blew up his whole life.”

Mandy’s expression softened—not toward Jason, but toward Rebecca.

“He already blew up both of ours.”

That was the truth.

Rebecca had not come to destroy our family.

She had arrived at the wreckage carrying documents.

Chapter 3

After Rebecca left with her son, Mandy took the girls upstairs to collect their coats. Jason followed her through the house begging for five minutes to explain.

Dad stood beside his whiteboard looking strangely lost.

Finally he cleared his throat.

“Well.”

Everyone turned.

“We could finish scoring.”

Mandy stopped halfway into her coat.

“What?”

Dad glanced at the board.

“We’re almost done.”

Mom stared at him.

“Frank.”

“Tradition matters most when things are difficult.”

I stood.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Jason currently has thirty-eight points.”

Dad looked.

“Yes.”

“I believe we have new information affecting the family-values category.”

Mandy made a choking sound.

Dad rubbed his forehead.

Then he picked up the eraser.

Jason spun around.

“You’re taking points away?”

Dad pointed the marker at him.

“You lied to your wife.”

“Which one?” I asked.

Silence.

I closed my eyes.

“That one slipped out. Sorry.”

Dad erased more points.

“Also integrity,” I said.

“There is no integrity category.”

“He literally had an integrity slide.”

Jason threw on his coat.

“This is ridiculous.”

I stood across from him.

“Finally, something we agree on.”

For a second, he looked less like Best Son and more like my older brother—the boy who used to let me ride on his bicycle handlebars before our family learned to compare everything.

Then he looked at me.

“This is probably the happiest day of your life.”

Whatever sympathy I had felt disappeared.

“You think I wanted this?”

“You’ve always been jealous of me.”

“Of what?”

He gestured around the room.

“The career. The family. The trophy. All of it.”

I looked down at the broken eagle lying beside the fireplace.

“Jason, I study planets for a living. I have spent weeks analyzing models where it may literally rain vaporized metal sideways. I never wanted your plastic eagle.”

His expression tightened.

“You always acted superior.”

“No. I stayed quiet while everyone used my life as the joke and yours as the example.”

Mom started to speak.

I held up my hand.

“For years, you all told me to come down from space because Jason had the real life.”

Nobody interrupted.

I looked at the broken trophy.

“Turns out I wasn’t the one living in an imaginary world.”

Jason left.

Three weeks later, Mandy filed for divorce.

Rebecca hired her own attorney too. I will spare you the legal details because even the attorneys appeared tired when phrases like concurrent marriages entered the conversation.

Jason moved into a furnished apartment near work.

The Mercedes disappeared a few months later.

I never asked whether he returned it, sold it, or launched it into the sun.

My relationship with him became distant.

Not hateful.

Just honest.

Several months later, he asked me to meet for coffee.

No red velvet jacket.

No PowerPoint.

No achievement folder.

He stirred his coffee for a long time before speaking.

“I spent years needing everybody to think I was doing better than I really was.”

“I know.”

“I think eventually I started believing the version I was selling.”

“That happens.”

He looked at me.

“I was terrible to you.”

“You were annoying to me.”

His mouth twitched.

“I did worse things to other people.”

“That too.”

Then he said something I never expected.

“I was jealous of you.”

I actually glanced behind me.

“Of me?”

“You like your life.”

That stayed with me.

The truth was, I had wanted our parents’ approval too.

I wanted Dad to understand that my research mattered. I wanted Mom to stop treating being unmarried like a delayed construction project. I wanted one Christmas where my salary, my house, my career, and Jason’s bonus were not placed on opposite sides of a whiteboard.

But wanting applause and building your whole identity around applause are different things.

Jason had built around it.

I had mostly complained about the noise.

Final chapter

The following Christmas, I almost stayed home.

Then Mom mailed me an invitation.

Plain white card.

No gold lettering.

Christmas. Noon. Come hungry.

At the bottom she had handwritten:

No competitions. I swear.

I arrived at 12:03.

Dad opened the door.

“Spaceman!”

I raised an eyebrow.

He immediately corrected himself.

“Dr. Brooks.”

“That’s worse.”

He laughed and hugged me.

The trophy was gone.

Beside the fireplace sat a small wooden box.

I opened it.

Inside was the old plaque.

Brooks Family Excellence Trophy.

Underneath, Dad had added a second plaque.

Retired December 25 due to family values.

I started laughing.

“Who did this?”

Dad looked toward Mom.

Mom looked toward Mandy.

Mandy had come with Madison and Haley. Rebecca had been invited too but decided not to attend that year, which I understood.

Jason arrived alone.

Normal sweater.

No slides.

Nobody discussed salaries.

Nobody submitted achievements.

Nobody earned points for mortgages, children, weight loss, garage shelving, or the strategic contemplation of granite countertops.

Dad asked about my research.

I started explaining atmospheric spectroscopy.

His eyes glazed over after about ninety seconds.

But he tried.

That mattered more than points ever would have.

After dessert, Madison suggested playing charades.

Every adult froze.

She looked around.

“What?”

“What game?” Mandy asked carefully.

“Charades.”

Dad visibly relaxed.

“Fine. Good. Excellent.”

We split into teams.

My first clue was astronaut.

Before I even moved, the entire family started screaming my name.

“I hate every one of you.”

Mom laughed.

“Oh, come on, Nate. You’re our space expert.”

Jason grinned.

“Try not to get lost between the little stars.”

The room went quiet.

He froze.

You could actually see him wishing he could grab the sentence and put it back in his mouth.

I pointed at him.

“Careful. I know where you live now.”

Mandy snorted eggnog through her nose.

Dad fell sideways against the sofa.

Mom shouted, “Nathaniel!”

Madison collapsed on the rug.

And then Jason laughed.

Really laughed.

Not his presentation laugh.

Not the sound he made when everyone else was supposed to know he was winning.

Just my brother laughing at himself.

For years, I thought my family’s problem was that they did not respect my achievements.

Eventually I realized the problem was bigger and simpler.

We had confused achievement with character.

A promotion tells you someone is good at convincing a company to promote them.

A salary tells you what somebody gets paid.

A research paper tells you what a scientist managed to prove.

And a four-foot trophy tells you that your father had a credit card and absolutely no taste.

None of those things tell you whether someone is honest.

Or loyal.

Or kind.

Jason had spent years collecting proof that he was successful while quietly becoming someone he could not afford to have examined too closely.

I had spent years resenting that nobody gave my accomplishments enough points.

We were both paying too much attention to the scoreboard.

Dad still keeps one piece of the old trophy in a kitchen drawer.

The eagle wing.

He calls it “historical evidence.”

I call it Exhibit A in the Museum of Poor Decisions.

And every Christmas, sooner or later, somebody brings up that afternoon.

Usually Dad.

“Remember when Best Son had two wives?”

As though any of us could possibly forget.

The funny thing is, I no longer hate that Christmas.

I hate what happened to Mandy, Rebecca, and the children. I hate that Jason hurt so many people because admitting the truth would have damaged the version of himself he had spent years selling.

But that ridiculous Christmas finally ended something our family should never have started.

Nobody has won Best Son since.

Nobody wins Christmas at all.

We just show up.

Sometimes late.

Sometimes irritating.

Sometimes carrying dry ham.

Dad still uses the ceremonial knife even though Mom threatens to replace it every year.

And occasionally, when somebody teases me about space, I tease them back.

The difference is that nobody keeps score afterward.

Somewhere in my parents’ kitchen drawer is a broken gold eagle from the ugliest trophy I have ever seen.

I used to think it represented eleven years of losing.

Now I think it represents the Christmas my family finally learned there were more important things than winning.

THE END.
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