She called on a Thursday night in November, which should have been my first warning. We talked Sundays, mostly, and even then not for long.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, setting my keys on the counter. I had just come in from a job site in Dilworth. My Carhartt jacket still smelled like sawdust and polyurethane. There was drywall dust in the creases of my jeans, and one cuff had gone stiff where joint compound dried into the fabric somewhere around midmorning.

“Hi, sweetie.” Her voice had that careful tone, the one she used when she was about to say something she would rather not.

“How are you?”

“Good. Just got home. What’s up?”

A breath.

“So, Thanksgiving,” she said. “We need to talk about Thanksgiving.”

I set my keys on the counter and waited.

“Evan’s bringing someone this year. Natalie. His girlfriend. It’s the first time he’s introducing her to the family, and he’s nervous. He asked if maybe this year it could just be the immediate family. Him, Natalie, me, and Dad. Keep it small. Intimate.”

I still did not say anything.

I was trying to process what I was hearing.

“Mom,” I said slowly. “I am immediate family.”

“I know, honey. I know. But Evan feels like he just wants to make a good impression, and he’s worried that…”

“Worried that what?”

A longer pause.

“He said your job might be a little awkward to explain to Natalie.”

The words hit with a specific kind of weight, the weight of a confirmation of something you already knew but had been hoping you were wrong about.

“My job,” I said.

“He didn’t mean it that way, sweetie. He just, Natalie is very professional. She works in design, and Evan’s trying to present a certain image.”

“And I don’t fit that image.”

“Kira, don’t be like that.”

“What did he say, Mom? Exactly.”

She hesitated.

“He said you’re a construction worker, and Natalie’s family is very traditional, and he doesn’t want her to think we’re…”

She stopped.

“Blue collar,” I finished.

“He didn’t say that.”

“But that’s what he meant.”

My mother sighed.

“Honey, you understand, don’t you? It’s important to Evan. This girl might be the one. He just wants everything to go smoothly.”

I looked down at my hands. Grime under my fingernails. A blister on my palm from carrying two-by-fours that afternoon. I had been on site since six that morning, checking measurements, settling a scheduling issue with the flooring crew, climbing into a crawl space to look at old plumbing that did not look right.