Page 46 of Sweet Ruin

I turn and look out at the crowd. Fifty sets of eyes look back at me.

Here goes nothing.

“Alright,” I say. The hubbub in the room dies down. “As you can clearly see, I’m not my dad. He’s the one who did this every year. He’s gone now, but I’m still going to do it the way he did—at first. Then I’ve added my own special little surprise at the end.”

With that, I start the deck.

The screen goes white, then goes to the title card.

DORSEY FAMILY CHRISTMAS EVE

And under that, in the smaller font:

Dad’s slideshow. Year 26.

The room goes aww all at once. I click again and his version of Silent Night starts to play through the speakers.

I almost feel guilty, because the first half is so sweet and charming. A squalling, red-faced Vivian and a cherub-cheeked two-year-old me, lying on either side of my mom in her hospital bed with my dad looming next to us, grinning from ear to ear.

All four of us at Nathan’s on the boardwalk. I had mustard smeared on my nose.

Vivian’s sweet sixteen. She’s wearing a tiara.

Dad’s sixtieth. He’s asleep in a chair with a paper crown crooked on his head, and I’m behind him, out of focus, a cake in my hands.

The rest of the family is threaded throughout. Uncle Johnny manning the grill at a Memorial Day barbecue, Aunt Virginia and Uncle Dave dancing at a wedding, Cousin Maryanne’s Halloween party, a family reunion at the lake, my grandmother at ninety, sitting straight up in a folding chair with her purse in her lap, because she never once put it down at a party in her life.

I click. I click. I click again.

The oohs and awws and laughs continue. Not one person in here is unhappy right now. They are all having a lovely fucking time.

And then the deck gets to my sister.

It’s the high life captured one frame at a time. She glows and puffs up bigger and bigger with every single one.

Cannes, Tulum, Rio de Janeiro.

Nightclubs, yachts, helicopters, mansions.

Pretty clothes and flashing jewelry, blown-out hair and glistening nails.

My skinny, perfect, radiant sister always perfectly captured.

“Doesn’t she photograph well?” my mother sighs. “My little girl is such a beauty.”

Everyone is eating it up, but three people are even more enthralled than the rest.

My mother.

My husband.

And Vivian herself.

I stand tall in my shapeless black cardigan and wait. Wait. Wait. Wait just a little bit longer, savoring the last few seconds these people will ever have before the curtain is ripped back and the mask is removed and they come to see her for what she really is…

… and then I click one more time.

The next slide confuses them a bit.