The declined card was only the first thing to go wrong for them, and I did not answer any of the six calls, because I was already at the airport. I had told Larissa I would be on vacation, and I meant it. I flew to Arizona to stay with my sister, and I left them a house full of thirty arriving relatives, an empty grocery budget, and a primary bedroom I had cleared to the walls. What they did not know, standing in that kitchen watching a card get refused, was that the house had already been sold. The contract was signed. They were hosting Christmas in a home that would belong to a developer the week after the guests left.
Larissa’s parents arrived to a bare primary bedroom, no photographer, no prime rib, and a son-in-law who had to explain, in front of thirty people, that his father had cut him off. That conversation, I am told, was not a quiet one. Preston called eleven times over Christmas.
