I looked at the letter in my hand in sheer disbelief. The ridiculous thought that it had been sent to the wrong person who also happened to be named Penelope Dutch, and live in the same cramped apartment crossed my mind before i allowed the truth to sink in. The letter was from my great grandma. It was a familiar invitation to the familys secret santa that occured annually on the Dutch family estate.


I made my way to the only piece of furniture that fit in my tiny NYC apartment, and flopped backwards onto it. I had been estranged from my rich family for nearly eight years over a blowout fight over politics. Political disagreements are bad in any family, but in the dutch family your Political stance is everything. My mother was a successful politician,and my grandmother was a business tycoon. My great grandmother started it all, and often said she taught every one of her descendents everything they new. She might be 90, but she still ran the dutch family. I had never really cared about my past arguements with the rest of the dutch family, or my current estrangment. Recently however, I had a life changing epiphany.


Epiphanys don't come easy, and I had only reached out to my family after a horrific acid attack ruined my face and killed my best friend. It had killed me too, in a way. Me and my best friend Amy had met in art school, and had been best friends ever since. The cramped apartment I still lived in had been the one we rented together straight out of school.


My stomach dropped when I sat up to glance at the kitchen table. Bills and notices formed a pile almost three feet high, a reminder of how much Amy had done for me. We moved to NYC when we were young and dumb, and had barely managed to afford the apartment with two of us contributing. Now that Amy was dead, I couldn't afford the apartment. Somewhere in that pile of envelopes on the table there was likely an eviction notice.


In the dark days that followed the acid attack, I did many things I wouldn't usually do , things a member of the Dutch family would never do. I'm not sure if it was the loneliness, depression, desperation to pay rent, or the advice Amy used to give me that finally made me reach out to my great grandmother.


I had sent her a letter( she was never a fan of phone calls or text messages) explaining the details of my acid attack, and what was likely more important to her, the fact that I was ready to formally apologize for being an embaressment, and I was ready to learn from her again.


The secret santa letter in my hands had been her only response. I read it for the thousandth time, only picking out vital information this time. Everyone was to be at the estate on December twenty second, and was permitted to stay until boxing day. Getting to and from the mansion would be the responsibility of every individual participent over eighteen. Confirmation of participation may be sent to any family member who permanently recides at the estate. Last time I had been at the estate, there was fourteen people living there, but the only person I could be one hundred percent sure lived there now was great grandma bev, so that's who I would contact. On the bottom of the fancy letter, it said the whose secret santa I would be, assuming i decided to participate. It would be great uncle Todd. I scanned the page for any information I could have missed, and when I found none I stood and walked to the sink.


After leaning on the edge of the sink for a moment, feeling the world spin around me and trying to calm myself done, I poured myself a tall glass of water and sat on the kitchen floor to pull out my phone. I needed to buy plane tickets, I had to be at the dutch family estate in just over two weeks.