Dinner was a symphony of excess. Truffle risotto, Wagyu beef, wines older than my cousins. For the first time in my life, I watched my family eat without calculating the cost of every bite. They weren’t stressed. They weren’t fighting. They were happy. But the main course wasn’t the food. It was the view.
“Everyone, if you could look out the north window,” I announced, tapping my glass. The automated blinds rose silently. Below us, about three hundred yards down the slope, sat a modest luxury rental. It looked small and dark from this height. Through the windows, I could see tiny figures moving around a cramped dining table.
Constance, Brittany, the senator’s son. “Is that… is that your mom?” Aunt Sarah asked, squinting. “It is,” I said. “And she can see us, too.” I pressed a button on a remote. Outside on the terrace, a mechanism whirred to life. A forty-foot modular LED wall, the kind used for stadium concerts, blazed into existence. It wasn’t facing us. It was facing them.
And it was projecting a live, 4K feed of our dinner table. Down in the valley, the snowbank next to Constance’s rental was suddenly illuminated by a forty-foot image of Grandma Josephine laughing and eating caviar. It lit up their dining room like an alien abduction. My phone rang instantly. Constance.
I put it on speaker and set it in the center of the table. “What is happening?!” Constance shrieked. “There is a giant picture of your grandmother on the snow! Is that you? Are you here?”
“I’m right above you, Mom,” I said, my voice calm and amplified by the silence of the room. “Look up.” I saw the tiny figure in the window down below crane her neck. I raised my glass to the window. On the giant screen outside, a forty-foot version of me raised a forty-foot glass.
“Turn it off!” she screamed. “The senator’s son is asking what’s going on! You’re humiliating us!”
“Am I?” I asked. “I thought I was just in rehab. Crazy people do crazy things, right?”
“Briona, I am warning you…”
“Enjoy your turkey, Mom,” I cut her off, my tone flat and lethal. “It looks dry from up here.” I hung up. Down below, I saw the tiny figure throw her phone. Up here, the room erupted in cheers. Aunt Sarah was laughing so hard she was crying. Uncle Mike was high-fiving a waiter.
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