“I’m not making extra food anymore,” I said. “There’s dinner for four because four people live here. If you want to eat with us, call ahead and bring something. Otherwise, tonight there isn’t enough.”
The room went quiet so fast I could hear the dishwasher humming.
My father-in-law laughed once, like I was joking. “Come on now.”
“I’m not joking.”
My mother-in-law looked at my husband. “Are you really going to let her talk to us like this?”
Usually that was where he’d tell me to calm down. Instead, he looked around at the six people standing in our kitchen and said, “She’s right.”
Nobody expected that.
His sister folded her arms. “We’re family.”
“And family doesn’t walk in every Sunday expecting her to cook for everybody,” he said. “We’ve been doing this for years.”
My father-in-law set his coat back over his arm. For the first time I could remember, he didn’t have a comeback ready.
There was a lot of awkward shuffling after that. Someone checked their phone. Someone else suddenly remembered they had food at home. Within ten minutes the crowd that had arrived so confidently was heading back out the front door.
My mother-in-law stopped at the threshold. “I guess we’ll know next time.”
“Just call first,” I said.
The next Sunday nobody showed up.
The Sunday after that, my husband’s sister texted asking if she could come by and offered to bring a pasta salad.
A month later we had dinner with eight people around the table again. The difference was there were casserole dishes, desserts, and grocery bags on the counter.
That night, after everyone left, I put four containers of leftovers into the refrigerator and still had soup left in the pot.