Happy Thanksgiving💗🍁🍂

 Jody wished it could be a happier Thanksgiving. Yet, she knew that would be asking for a lot. Like, seeing her stepdad again.

"It's just..." she didn't want to be a downer to anyone, but she couldn't help but tell Aaron. "I wish I could see him again. But I know I never really meant much to him, anyway."

"You don't know that," he put his arm around he to console her. They were on the old family couch watching Chicago Fire. Earlier they'd had visits from Cara and Amanda. They hung out for a while, but then had to get ready for Thanksgiving too. "Maybe he feels he let you down too."

"Doubt it," she hadn't meant to feel so blue. "It's just, I feel so sad for Cara because she doesn't have him in her life either." She told him how Cara had been engaged once upon a time. It seemed everyone forgot about that. But she was going to have a big wedding too.

The more she talked she realized she was talking about herself, perhaps. Of course, Andrew had called, but she didn't answer. 

"Well, Dads aren't all they are cracked up to be," Aaron said he'd never met his. "It's hard to say if my mom just didn't want us to meet. Some of that time, he was in jail too." He sounded as if he hadn't had the happiest of Thanksgivings, either.

"We're, going to be together this Thanksgiving," Jody nodded as if not to dwell on the past. "All my brothers will be together."

"Even Jay?" Aaron practically smiled.

"Even Jay." She smiled back. He was making stuffing. Jared was baking the bird in the industrial kitchen where he worked. "And we'll have my mom's cranberry salad."

Jody kept smiling. Thankful she was exactly where she wanted to be even if the apartment was a little rundown. She was close to family. Even closer to Aaron. Yes, they could have had Thanksgiving all on their own perhaps. But there was family to share it with, and that's the way it should be.