He called his mother back.
“Any luck with the restaurants?”
“Nothing. Everyone’s booked. What do we do?”
“We cook it ourselves, obviously.”
Hudson looked at the raw turkeys again.
“Mom, I don’t know how to cook a turkey. I don’t know how to cook any of this.”
“Then you learn. YouTube exists. How hard can it be?”
Vivien arrived with her sleeves rolled up and a grim expression that suggested she was preparing for battle. She surveyed the kitchen like a general assessing a battlefield where all the soldiers had deserted.
“This is worse than I thought,” she announced. “These turkeys should have been in the oven four hours ago. They’ll never be ready in time.”
Hudson, who had spent the last hour watching YouTube videos about turkey preparation while growing increasingly panicked, looked up from his phone with desperate hope.
“Can we cook them faster somehow? Higher temperature?”
“Hudson, darling, you cannot rush a twenty-pound turkey. Physics doesn’t bend to accommodate your wife’s abandonment issues.”
They worked in tense silence for the next hour, Vivien barking instructions while Hudson fumbled through tasks that Isabella had always made look effortless. The stuffing ingredients sat in bowls, looking like components for a science experiment neither of them understood. The green bean casserole recipe might as well have been written in ancient Greek.
“Where is the stand mixer?” Vivien demanded, rifling through cabinets.
“I don’t know. Isabella always handles the kitchen stuff.”
“Well, Isabella isn’t here, is she?”
At noon, Hudson’s phone started ringing with calls from relatives asking about arrival times and dietary restrictions. Each conversation became more uncomfortable than the last.
“Hey, Hudson, it’s Uncle Raymond. Should I bring something? I know Vivien said everything was covered, but the wife made extra stuffing just in case.”
“Actually, Uncle Raymond, maybe you should bring the stuffing. And maybe anything else your wife might have made as backup.”
“Backup? Is everything okay?”
Hudson looked at his mother, who was attempting to wrestle a raw turkey into a roasting pan while cursing under her breath.
“Just bring whatever you have.”
By 12:30, word had spread through the family network that something was wrong with dinner preparations. Hudson’s phone buzzed constantly with confused relatives offering to help, asking questions, or trying to figure out if they should make alternative plans.
The kitchen had descended into chaos. Vivien had managed to get one turkey into the oven, but it was clear to both of them that it wouldn’t be ready until evening. The side dishes remained untouched. The elegant timeline Isabella always maintained had collapsed into panic and improvisation.
Na
USA