The invitation came in April.
It was a letter, not a text, which told me everything I needed to know about who had sent it. Thick cream paper, engraved, my name in handwriting that I recognized from three years of birthday cards.
Elena Vale.
It was from Julian's mother. Dinner at the house on the lake, the one where I had spent every Christmas for three years, the one where his mother had taught me to make the cranberry sauce with orange peel because I had said I didn't know how.
I read it twice and set it on the kitchen table.
Maya picked it up, read it, and set it down.
"Are you going to go?"
"I don't know."
"She's not asking you to forgive him. She's asking you to come to dinner."
"That's the same thing in her language."
"Maybe," Maya said. "Maybe not."
I thought about Julian
