The first of many such Christmas cards

Dear Scott and Mary Bailey,

Thank you very much for your Christmas card to my mom…

***

“Daniel?”

“Yeah?” I grumble, annoyed as my mom enters my room.

“I got a card,” she says, placing a Christmas card onto my desk. “Do you know who this is?”

I sigh. I’m not doing anything important—that’s not the point—it’s that I have to stop whatever stupid thing I’m doing to help my mom out, in this case, to look at the names signed at the bottom of a rather generic Christmas card with some generic greeting about ‘Jesus being the reason for the season’ and hoping that the recipient also feels ‘joy to the Earth.’

But there’s a couple extra sentences. Something about how ‘we haven’t seen you in a long time and we hope you are well.’

And then I see the names. It’s from the Bailey family.