Chapter One
Jaid loathed, hated and despised the annual family Christmas party. Normal people got together at Thanksgiving. But not her family. Oh no. They made a huge production over Christmas Eve.
The family assembled from the four corners of the earth in time for a huge formal dinner at 9 p.m. After which gifts—only one per person thank god!—were distributed, and promptly at midnight, toasts were drunk.
By 2 a.m. most of the family was either drunk, or asleep, or both, but they all reassembled midmorning for yet another huge meal, before disappearing, presumably to visit the other side of their various family trees.
At age thirty, Jaid had decided that this, her thirtieth family Christmas, would be her last. Since everyone bought along their boyfriends, step-kids, fathers-in-law, an
