Her stepsister said she’d asked about Ava while they were setting the table because there were nineteen people coming and several weren’t even family. Her father told her Ava had decided to stay with me. When she asked why her boyfriend couldn’t simply come too, he lowered his voice and said, “Because I don’t want her getting any more serious with him. She needs to understand that relationship isn’t something we’re going to encourage.” His wife apparently asked what Christmas dinner had to do with that, and he said excluding him would “send the message without turning it into an argument.”
That was when her stepsister realized the space explanation had been invented specifically for Ava. Her own boyfriend had been invited without anyone asking, and her stepbrother’s girlfriend had even been allowed to bring her mother because she would’ve otherwise spent Christmas alone. Ava’s boyfriend was the only person who’d been excluded. Her father knew exactly how much the boy mattered to her. He’d sat beside Ava through my mother’s funeral, driven her home when she got sick at school, and had been coming to that house for two years without a single problem. Her father simply didn’t like that Ava was becoming serious about someone he hadn’t chosen.
Then her stepsister handed me the gift bag. Inside was a sweater their father had bought for Ava weeks before Christmas and a card signed “Dad.” She’d found it still sitting under the tree in January and asked why nobody had taken it to her. He told her, “If she chose spending Christmas with that boy over her family, she doesn’t get to come afterward and collect presents like nothing happened.” Except Ava had never been given that choice. She had been told there wasn’t room for her boyfriend, said she’d rather stay home, and cooked Christmas dinner with me.
Her stepsister said that was the moment she’d decided to buy the gift from her father herself and bring it over. But before leaving, she’d asked him one final question: what exactly was so wrong with Ava’s boyfriend that justified all of this? He answered, “Nothing. That’s the problem. If they stay together, she’s going to build a life around him, and I’m not ready for her to have a life that doesn’t revolve around this family.”
