“Galliano, Cointreau, orange juice, and cream,” she says.

The woman forgets nothing, Kelley thinks. She is the smartest human being he has ever met.

Kevin nods. “On it.”

Ava says, “I dropped the ball on Christmas dinner. I ordered the rib roast, but I forgot to go pick it up. And now I’m sure the store is closed.”

“I picked it up yesterday,” Isabelle says. “They called with a reminder, so I went to get it.”

“Oh, thank you!” Ava says.

“In a little while, I’ll help you prepare it,” Margaret says. “Are we having Yorkshire pudding?”

“Of course,” Ava says. “And roasted asparagus and spinach salad.”

“I’ll do my hot bacon dressing for the salad,” Margaret says.

“What man in his right mind would rather sleep with Martha Stewart?” Kelley says.

They all drink and open presents. One person opens at a time—Quinn family tradition, so that it lasts longer. It’s admittedly easier to accomplish this without the grandchildren around. Patrick’s boys are ten-, eight-, and six-year-old weapons of mass destruction. The other person who never obeyed present-opening protocol was Bart. Even in his late teens, he would come down and rip open all his presents at once.

Mitzi never reprimanded him, of course.

The year they gave him a brand-new Jeep Sahara in metallic royal blue with a massive silver ribbon wrapped around it counts as the worst Christmas on record. Bart was thrilled; he was straight out of central casting, a seventeen-year-old kid jumping up and down, hooting and hollering, hugging Mitzi, hugging Kelley, saying Oh man, oh man, you guys rock! Ava, Kevin, and Patrick, however, had stared at the Jeep in disbelief. None of them had said a word, but Kelley heard their thoughts.

A brand-new Jeep for a seventeen-year-old kid who hasn’t made the honor roll since sixth grade, who smashed up the last car—Mitzi’s Volvo station wagon—so that all it was good for was the demolition derby, a kid who you know drinks and smokes dope. You’re giving HIM a brand-new Jeep, when none of us got so much as a new bicycle?

Kelley hadn’t wanted to give Bart the Jeep, but Mitzi insisted. She believed that if Bart was given something he really loved and treasured, he would take care of it, thereby learning an important lesson about responsibility.

Bart drove the Jeep into Miacomet Pond in June, and the water was brackish enough that the engine block seized.

Totaled.

Then, five months later, he did the number on Kelley and Mitzi’s LR3, busting a hole in the airport fence and breaking his best friend’s leg.

No wonder Kelley is going broke.

How can Mitzi possibly argue that Bart did not need the Marines?

The Christmas of the Jeep—two years earlier—Patrick, Kevin, and Ava gave Kelley and Mitzi the silent treatment all throughout Christmas dinner, leaving poor Jennifer to make chitchat with Mitzi, Kelley, and Bart. Oh, and George, Kelley remembers now; of course George was there. They all ate the goose Mitzi had prepared, which had been unusually stringy that year.

Kelley doesn’t want to dwell on the less-than-stellar Christmases of the past; nor does he want to beat himself up for his parenting mistakes. What parent doesn’t screw up every once in a while?

Patrick gets a tie and a biography of Alexander Hamilton.

Kevin gets a series of boxes within boxes that ends in an envelope of cash—five hundred dollars (in years past it has been a thousand dollars, but Kelley can only do what he can do)—and everyone laughs because this trick, presents nested like Russian dolls, is tradition. It’s followed by the requisite remembering of the year Kevin gave Patrick a box of extra-large condoms and Ava, only eleven years old at the time, didn’t know what they were.

Then it’s Kelley’s turn to open his gift from Margaret. It’s a small box; he knows what it is, as she gets him the same thing every year. In previous years, he’s opened his gift from Margaret privately, all by himself in the quiet of his bedroom, while Mitzi was busy with other things (busy with George, Kelley now realizes), because Mitzi does not appreciate that Margaret still sends him a gift.

“What can it be?” Kelley asks, and Margaret gives her low, throaty chuckle, known to all her faithful viewers.

It’s a beautifully tied fly, even more gorgeous than the ones from the past. Margaret once interviewed the foremost saltwater fly fisherman in the world; he lives in Islamorada, and now this guy makes one fly a year for Kelley. The fly is to go with the fly-fishing rod that Margaret bought for Kelley the last Christmas they were still together, back when they vowed to spend less time at work and more time having fun. Kelley had gotten Margaret a mask, fins, and snorkel, which he is certain she has never used, just as he has never used his fly-fishing rod.

But wait.

Not true.

He actually did use the rod once, on a warm, still day in September sixteen or seventeen years earlier, but he caught such hell from Mitzi about taking an entire afternoon to himself when they had a three-year-old and an inn under construction that Kelley never went fly-fishing again. Blissfully unaware of this, Margaret keeps giving him a fly every Christmas; he has a box of them in the back of his sock drawer. When viewed together, they are as colorful and exquisite as the crown jewels.

“Thank you,” Kelley says, and he leans over to kiss Margaret chastely, as everyone is watching.

Maybe in his retirement: fly-fishing.

Ava gets a sweater.

Patrick gets another tie.

Kevin gets new running shoes.

Kelley gets a whisk and a new potato peeler of good, sturdy Danish design.

Margaret has an envelope to open that is from “the kids” (meaning Ava procured it, Patrick paid for it, and Kevin signed his name to the card). It’s two tickets to see The Book of Mormon, tenth-row orchestra seats. Margaret claps her hands with delight and kisses each of the kids, and Isabelle too, and thanks them a dozen times.

“You do know you’re impossible to buy for,” Ava says.

Margaret beams. “This is just the perfect gift. And Saturday night—primo marveloso!” She really does look as happy—well, as happy as a kid on Christmas, even though she can go to any Broadway show on opening night and sit in the front row center.

“Who will you take with you?” Kelley asks.

Margaret shrugs. “Probably Drake, if he’s still speaking to me.”

“Drake?” Kelley says. He feels a pinch of jealousy. “Who’s Drake?”