The first thing I noticed was the turkey in the window.

Perfectly browned, glistening under warm kitchen lights, framed in a big bay window of a blue Craftsman house on an American suburban street, while the sky over Minneapolis turned that icy purple it gets the night of Thanksgiving.

My breath fogged in the air as I stood on the sidewalk, clutching a bottle of Pinot Noir in one hand and a still-warm pumpkin pie in the other, and I had one clear, ridiculous thought:

That is what Thanksgiving is supposed to look like. And I do not belong in there.

Behind me, the streetlights hummed over rows of nearly identical houses. Lawns were trimmed down to winter stubble. Little American flags on a few porches fluttered in the wind. Cars lined both curbs, driveways packed—everyone home, everyone gathered.

Everyone except me.

I’d only been in Minneapolis for two months. New city, new job, new apartment with beige walls that still smelled faintly of fresh paint and loneliness. No friends. No family anywhere near the same time zone. Just the glow of my laptop and the hum of the fridge and the promise of a frozen dinner if I chickened out.

I shifted the wine bottle to my other hand and checked my phone again.

234 Emerald Street.

My GPS map showed a little blue dot pulsing in front of the house directly to my right: dark green siding, white trim, a lit wreath on the door. The blue house with the perfect turkey in the window was two driveways down.

“Of course,” I muttered. “Wrong house to obsess over.”

I looked up at 234. Porch light on. Warm glow from inside. A paper turkey taped crookedly to the glass pane in the door.

I thought of Jared leaning against my cubicle yesterday back at the office downtown, where floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the Mississippi River slicing through the city.

“You can’t spend Thanksgiving by yourself, man,” he’d said. “That’s actually sad.”

“My family’s in Colorado,” I’d replied, pretending it didn’t sting to say it. “I’m flying out for Christmas. Plane tickets twice in one month is not happening.”

“Then come to my girlfriend’s place. She’s hosting. It’s casual. There’ll be people from work, some of her friends. Just bring wine. Or dessert. Or both, if you’re trying to impress.”

“We’re not actually friends,” I’d reminded him. “We just suffer in the same meetings.”

“Yeah, well, consider this your official upgrade,” he said. “234 Emerald, 6 p.m. Don’t be weird about it.”

It was 5:57 now. My fingers had gone stiff around the neck of the wine bottle. The pumpkin pie—the last physical connection I had to my grandmother’s Thanksgiving table in Denver—rested warm against my arm through the foil and towel I’d wrapped it in.

I could turn around. Go back to my beige apartment. Put the pie in the fridge. Microwave something. Pretend I didn’t care.

Instead, I took a breath, squared my shoulders, walked up the steps to 234 Emerald, and rang the doorbell.

The door opened so fast it startled me. I hadn’t even had time to run.

A woman in her early sixties filled the doorway, gray hair pulled back in a bun, flour dusted across her cheeks and the front of her “Gobble Til You Wobble” apron. Her eyes crinkled as she smiled.

“Oh, you’re here!” she said, as if she’d been waiting specifically for me. “Well, don’t just stand there, honey, it’s freezing. Come in, come in.”

She pulled the door wide and a wave of warmth and smell hit me—roasting turkey, sage, butter, something sweet like cinnamon. Actual Thanksgiving.

“Uh,” I stammered, stepping inside automatically. “Thank you for having me. I brought—”

“Bob!” she called over her shoulder, loudly enough to make me jump. “He’s here!”

A man appeared in the archway that led into the living room. Late sixties, solid build, gray hair, reading glasses perched on top of his head like he’d forgotten they were there. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans. He gave me an appraising look and then a broad, satisfied grin.

“Finally,” he said. “Kate said you’d come.”

For a heartbeat, that name—Kate—floated in the space between us like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit anything in my life.

I opened my mouth. “Kate?”

“She’s on her way,” the flour-dusted woman said as she deftly relieved me of my wine and pie. “The restaurant’s always chaos on holidays. She said if she was late, we should start without her. Oh, wine and pie.” She held up the offerings. “A man after my own heart.”

Bob leaned closer to inspect the pie. “Bakery?” he asked.

“I, uh… I made it,” I said.

“You bake?” The woman’s face lit up. “Trevor, you didn’t tell us you bake.”

Trevor.

The word hit me like a glass of cold water in the face.

“I—sorry,” I blurted. “I think there’s been—”

“Come meet everyone,” she said, already walking away. “You’re the last one to arrive apart from Kate. I’m Maggie, by the way. I feel like you’ve been at this table for months already the way she talks about you.”

My brain scrambled.

Trevor. They thought I was someone named Trevor. Someone their daughter clearly had told them all about. Someone who apparently baked. Someone who was very much not me.

Behind Maggie, Bob clapped me on the shoulder with a familiarity that knocked the objection right out of my mouth.

“Good to finally meet you, son,” he said warmly. “Kate’s told us a lot.”

I could feel the words “I am not Trevor” pushing up my throat like a scream. They got stuck somewhere behind my teeth as Maggie disappeared around the corner with my pie.

Screw GPS, I thought faintly, as Bob steered me into the living room.

I should have turned around right then. I should have apologized, explained, backed out the front door, Googled Jared’s name again and double-checked the address he’d texted. Instead, I let myself be pulled deeper into someone else’s Thanksgiving.

The living room was crowded and comfortably messy. A big sectional couch wrapped around a coffee table cluttered with appetizer plates, half-empty bowls of chips, and a plate of deviled eggs. A widescreen TV on the wall was muted, a football game running in the background—Detroit playing, of course; it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving in the United States without the Lions losing.

An elderly man with a blanket over his knees sat in a recliner near the window, nodding along to some conversation. A teenage boy slumped on the end of the couch, thumbs tapping furiously on his phone. A woman in her forties knelt by the coffee table, rearranging cheese and crackers on a wooden board like a stylist on a magazine shoot.

They all looked up when Bob boomed, “He made it.”

The woman with the cheese board stood quickly, smoothing her sweater. “Trevor,” she said. “Finally.”

“I…” I started helplessly.

“I’m Linda,” she said, crossing the room and wrapping me in a quick hug before I could protest. “Kate’s aunt. This is my dad, Frank.” She gestured to the man in the recliner. “And that lump over there is Jake, Kate’s brother.”

Jake glanced up long enough to nod, then dropped his eyes back to his phone.

“Sit, sit,” Linda said, patting the couch cushion next to her. “You’re just in time. Mom’s about to bring out the turkey.”

I sat.

I’m not sure why I sat. Maybe it was the warmth. Maybe it was the smell. Maybe it was the fact that I had spent two months eating alone in front of a silent TV in an empty apartment and suddenly I was in a house that sounded like my childhood: voices overlapping, laughter from the kitchen, a football game murmuring on TV, dishes clinking.

Maybe I sat because Maggie had said my name—Trevor—with such effortless affection that I wanted, just for a second, to be whoever she thought her daughter had chosen.

Bob reappeared, thrusting a glass of red wine into my hand. “You prefer red, right?” he asked. “Kate said you like a good Pinot.”

I glanced down at the bottle he’d opened. Not the one I’d brought—another American Pinot Noir from Oregon, label crisp, expensive.

“Red is great,” I heard myself say.

“Good,” he said, taking his own glass. “So, Trevor, Kate tells us you’re in finance.”

My heart dropped.

I am a food engineer. I develop starch systems and emulsifiers and talk about water activity in shelf-stable snacks for a living. The closest I’d ever been to “finance” was reading my student loan statements.

The lie came out too fast to catch.

“Yeah,” I said weakly. “I was. For a while.”

“You were?” Linda looked interested. “Career change?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Recently.”

Before Bob could press, Maggie appeared in the doorway, drying her hands on a towel. “Dinner in twenty!” she announced. “Trevor, you haven’t tried the appetizers. You look pale. Sit closer to the food.”

“I’m fine,” I started. “Really, I just—”

“Did you try the spinach artichoke dip?” she asked, eyes bright. “It’s Kate’s recipe. Well, mostly. I started it years ago. She improved it after culinary school.”

Culinary school.

I blinked. Jared’s girlfriend worked in marketing. That’s what he’d said. Unless there were two Kates on Emerald Street with boyfriends and careers and an unhealthy obsession with spinach dip.

“Oh, right,” I said weakly. “Sure. I’ll try it.”

Maggie sat beside me on the couch, handed me a plate, and spooned a big portion of creamy dip beside a neat row of crackers. “I’m Maggie, properly,” she said, patting my knee. “Kate’s mother. It’s nice to finally meet the man who has her smiling again. After Derek—”

“Maggie,” Bob warned.

“Well, he was unpleasant,” she said primly. “This one has kind eyes. I can tell.”

I stared at her. My chest felt tight.

“I think there’s been—” I tried again.

“Just wait until you try dinner,” she said. “Do you cook?”

“Yes,” I said automatically. “Actually, I—”

“Perfect. Come help me in the kitchen. Bob burns things when he looks at them. You look like you respect food.”

Before I could decide whether that was the strangest compliment anyone had ever given me, Maggie stood and tugged at my sleeve. I followed.

The kitchen was a full-on Thanksgiving battleground. Counters crowded with dishes: green beans under a blanket of fried onions, potatoes mashed and waiting, cranberry sauce in both canned and homemade form. The turkey sat in the open oven, skin a burnished gold that would have made my grandmother whistle in approval.

For a moment, the sight hit me so hard I had to grip the back of a chair.

I could see my grandmother’s kitchen in Denver like it was right in front of me—her old gas stove, the chipped yellow tile, the glass dish where she always cooled her pumpkin pies. She’d passed away last year, the week before Thanksgiving. We’d had a funeral instead of a feast.

I hadn’t let myself think about that until now.

“Can you grab the thermometer?” Maggie asked, snapping me back. “Top drawer to the right of the stove.”

I found it, handed it over. She pierced the thigh, squinted at the numbers.

“One sixty-five on the dot,” she declared. “Perfect. Give me those oven mitts. We’re doing the bird ballet.”

She nodded to the oven. I grabbed a mitt, slid my hands under the roasting pan when she counted to three, and together we lifted the turkey out onto the waiting cutting board.

“Oh, look at that,” she breathed. “Trevor, we did good.”

We did nothing, I thought. You did everything. I just showed up forty seconds before the curtain call.

“Now,” she said briskly, “gravy. Can you make a roux?”

There it was. Something I actually knew.

“Yes,” I said, relief flooding me. “Butter and flour, low heat, whisk constantly.”

She smiled. “A man who knows his way around a pan. My faith in my daughter’s judgment is restored.”

She pulled out the saucepan, handed me butter, flour, stock, and the pan of drippings from the turkey. Muscle memory took over. The butter hissed, the flour went in, and the nutty smell of roux filled the kitchen. I whisked, added drippings slowly, then stock, seasoning with salt and pepper by instinct and gratitude.

Maggie peeked over my shoulder. “Oh, you’re doing it right,” she said approvingly. “Low and slow. No lumps. Where did you learn?”

“My grandmother,” I said softly. “She taught me everything. I’m… actually a food engineer. It’s my job to think about how food behaves. On the science side.”

Maggie’s eyebrows shot up. “A food engineer? Kate told us you were in finance.”

My brain skipped like a scratched CD.

“I—I was,” I said quickly. “For a while. I switched careers. I realized I loved food more than numbers.”

That part, at least, was true. After two years in a dull corporate analyst job out of college, I’d gone back to grad school for food science.

“Well,” she said, turning back to the potatoes, “good for you. Life’s too short to do something you hate. Kate tried to be a doctor for a year. She lasted two semesters of pre-med before she realized organic chemistry made her cry, but chopping onions didn’t.”

She laughed softly. “She called from the campus library one night and said, ‘Mom, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I want to go to culinary school.’”

“What did you say?” I asked, whisking.

“What could I say?” Maggie shrugged. “She’d always been happiest in the kitchen. I just told her, ‘If you’re going to do this, do it all the way.’ Bob took longer to come around.” She shot a fond look toward the dining room. “But when she brought him that lemon tart at family dinner…” She smiled. “He was converted.”

I thought of my own parents back in Colorado. My mom, who still sent me texts with photos of the mountains each week. My dad, who measured love in practical advice and “be careful”s. I’d told them I couldn’t afford flights for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Technically true. Emotionally cowardly.

“Is your grandmother coming for Christmas?” Maggie asked, tasting the potatoes and reaching for more salt.

My hand stilled on the whisk. “No,” I said. “She, um… she passed last year.”

Maggie’s hands paused. She turned slowly, really looking at me. “Oh, honey,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah,” I said, staring into the silky swirl of gravy. “Me too.”

“Was she a good cook?”

“The best,” I said. “This pie I brought—it was her recipe. It’s the only thing I’ve made that tastes even close to hers.”

“I can’t wait to try it,” Maggie said. “She’d be proud you’re still making it. Recipes are a kind of inheritance, you know? They keep people in the room.”

My throat burned. I focused on not letting the gravy boil.

When it was done, she tasted it, eyes widening. “Trevor,” she said. “This is outstanding. You’re hired.”

I actually laughed. It burst out of me, surprising and genuine. Something loosened in my chest.

Maybe that’s why, when she called, “Everyone, dinner’s ready!” and hustled me into the dining room, I didn’t bolt.

The dining table was long and old, the kind with scratches that told stories. Maggie had gone all out—white tablecloth, cloth napkins folded into fans, mismatched but charming plates, a row of candles down the center. Place cards in neat handwriting rested at each setting.

I found mine between Bob and Linda. “Trevor,” it read in looping blue ink. Across from me sat an empty chair with “Kate” written on the card.

“She’ll get here when she gets here,” Bob muttered when he caught me glancing at the seat. “Dinner starts at seven sharp in this house.”

It was 7:02.

We bowed our heads while Bob said grace—simple, heartfelt, no fancy language. Just gratitude. For food. For family. For being here.

When my turn came in the traditional “what are you thankful for” circle, I intended to lie. Something safe. Something vague.

Instead, I heard myself say, “I’m grateful for kindness.”

Every eye at the table swung to me. My ears rang.

“I moved here from Denver two months ago,” I continued. “I don’t know anyone in Minneapolis yet. My family’s back in Colorado. My grandmother passed last year. This was… supposed to be my first Thanksgiving alone.”

Maggie’s hand drifted toward Bob’s, eyes shining.

“I was dreading today,” I said. “The quiet. The… empty table. But then I ended up here.” I swallowed. “And for a few hours, it felt like I was back at my grandmother’s house. The food. The noise. The way everyone talks over each other. The way you argue about the gravy like it’s a Supreme Court case.”

They laughed softly.

“So I’m grateful you opened your door to me,” I finished. “Even if… it was a bit of an accident.”

I saw Bob’s brow twitch at that last word, but Maggie smiled at me like I’d given her something more valuable than the wine or pie.

“That’s beautiful, Trevor,” she said quietly.

Guilt slammed into me so hard I almost dropped my fork.

Because the truth was this: they hadn’t opened their door to me. They’d opened it to a man their daughter loved. And I had stepped into his place like it was my right.

The food was phenomenal. The turkey was juicy, the stuffing herby and perfect, the potatoes creamy. My gravy, under any other circumstance, would have been the proudest thing I’d served on a table in months.

But every bite tasted like borrowed time.

Halfway through the meal, as Linda told a story about Kate nearly burning down the kitchen at age twelve trying to flambé bananas with a lighter and cheap rum, Bob set down his fork and turned to me.

“So,” he said. “How did you two meet again?”

My stomach turned to ice. “Who?” I asked stupidly.

He gave me a look. “You and Kate.”

I scrambled mentally. “Um. Through a friend,” I said. “Jared.”

“Jared?” Maggie asked. “I don’t know a Jared.”

“He’s, uh, a guy I work with,” I added quickly. “He… introduced us.”

“About six months ago, right?” Linda said. “Kate said you’d been seeing each other for half a year.”

“Right,” I said. “Six months.” I forced a laugh. “Feels like two, but time moves fast when you’re… happy.”

Bob’s gaze sharpened. “Funny,” he said. “You said you moved here two months ago.”

The air thinned. Every sound seemed to sharpen—the clink of a fork on a plate, the muffled call of the game announcer from the TV, the hum of the refrigerator.

“I traveled a lot before,” I said, too quickly. “Remote work and all that. We met when I was here for a project.”

“In finance,” Bob said evenly.

I opened my mouth, closed it. My thoughts tangled.

Before he could press, the front door opened.

The sound cut through the house like a bell.

“Sorry I’m late,” a woman’s voice called from the hallway, thick and raw. “The line at the interstate was awful and then I—”

She stepped into the dining room and stopped dead.

Silence fell like a curtain.

She was breathtaking in a way that made my lungs forget their job—late twenties, dark hair pulled into a messy knot, eyes swollen and rimmed with red. She wore a black chef’s jacket half-zipped under her coat, the sleeves pushed up as if she’d just walked out of a hot kitchen.

And she looked like she’d been crying for hours.

“Kate,” Maggie said, standing so fast her chair scraped. “Honey, what happened?”

Kate’s gaze flicked to her mother, then to Bob, to Linda, and finally to me. Her eyes widened in confusion and then sharpened with suspicion.

“Who,” she asked slowly, “is that?”

Maggie laughed, small and nervous. “Sweetheart, what do you mean? That’s Trevor.”

Kate stared at me like she was trying to see through my skin to whatever cowardly thing was hiding inside.

“That,” she said, voice cracking, “is not Trevor.”

The room went very, very still.

Bob’s hand tightened around his fork. “What do you mean, he’s not Trevor?”

Kate’s hands shook as she shrugged off her coat. “Because Trevor”—she swallowed hard—“broke up with me this afternoon. By text. While I was prepping twenty pumpkin cheesecakes for the restaurant’s Thanksgiving menu.”

She laughed, bitter and disbelieving. “He said he ‘needed space.’ That it ‘wasn’t me, it was him.’ That he was ‘so grateful for our time together’ and hoped we could ‘stay friends.’ On Thanksgiving.”

Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth. Linda muttered something under her breath that sounded like a very tame Minnesota version of an insult. Frank cursed softly.

Bob stood up, his chair skidding back. “He broke up with you… by text?”

Kate nodded, a tear sliding down her cheek. “I sat in the parking lot behind the restaurant for twenty minutes trying not to throw my phone into the snowbank. Then I drove here. I almost turned around three times, but I didn’t want to ruin Thanksgiving for everyone, so I practiced my ‘I’m fine’ smile in the car mirror and walked in and then…” She gestured at me. “There’s a stranger eating my mother’s turkey on my plate.”

Every eye at the table landed on me.

I felt suddenly, acutely aware of my own heartbeat. My own hands. The way the room seemed to tilt.

“I can explain,” I said, standing slowly.

Bob’s face was a controlled storm. “You’d better.”

I swallowed. “My name is Cameron Rhodes. I’m… not Trevor. Obviously.”

“Obviously?” Kate echoed. “Then what are you doing at my family’s Thanksgiving?”

“I was invited to dinner on Emerald Street,” I said, the words tumbling out now. “By my coworker, Jared. I thought this was his girlfriend’s house.”

“It isn’t,” Kate said flatly.

“Yeah, I figured that out,” I said weakly. “I must have typed the address wrong in my GPS. When Maggie opened the door and called me in, she… thought I was Trevor. I tried to say something, but everyone kept talking and—”

“And you just went with it?” Kate demanded. “You let my mother believe you were my boyfriend?”

“I didn’t say I was,” I protested. “I never actually said ‘I am Trevor.’”

“But you didn’t correct her,” Linda said quietly.

“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t. And that was wrong. I know it was. I wanted to tell you all as soon as possible, but then everything started happening so fast and I… I don’t know. I got swept up. I’ve never even met Trevor. I had no idea he’d just—”

“Dumped me,” Kate supplied. “Over text. On a national holiday.”

“I’m… I’m really sorry,” I said. “For what he did. For what I did. For all of this.”

Bob’s jaw worked. “I think you should leave,” he said, voice low.

“Dad,” Maggie started.

“No,” Bob said firmly, not taking his eyes off me. “He’s been sitting at our table under false pretenses. Whatever his intention, he lied to us. He needs to go.”

He was right. A hundred percent right.

My face burned as I grabbed my napkin and laid it neatly by my unfinished plate. My hands shook as I walked to the hallway coat closet, feeling every pair of eyes following me.

Maggie appeared beside me as I pulled my jacket off the hanger.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have been honest from the start.”

“You should have,” she agreed softly. Then, gentler, “But it was still nice having you here, Cameron.”

The unexpected use of my real name made my eyes sting.

Kate stood near the front door, arms wrapped around herself, still in her chef’s jacket. Up close, I could see the little embroidered logo of her restaurant on the chest: HARVEST MOON, MPLS.

For half a second, I saw it—the day she’d graduated culinary school, probably in a too-big hat and checkered pants, calling her mother and saying she’d gotten the job.

“I didn’t mean to hijack your Thanksgiving,” I said.

“Well,” she said, voice tight, “you managed to make it more interesting.”

“I know I crossed a line,” I said. “Several, actually. And I really am sorry. For… everything. For this. For Trevor.”

Her jaw clenched at the name.

“You don’t know me,” she said.

“I know your family loves you,” I said. “I know your mom is proud of you. I know your dad’s suspicious of anyone who sits at his table, which is probably wise. I know you were brave enough to walk away from something that wasn’t right for you and follow what you love. And I know that anyone who breaks up with you by text on Thanksgiving has no idea what he just lost.”

She stared at me for a long second.

“Get out of my house, Cameron,” she said quietly.

I nodded. “Fair.”

I stepped onto the porch. Cold air slapped me immediately. Behind me, I heard the door close with a soft but final click.

I stood for a moment, staring at the quiet, respectable American street. Houses glowed warmly. Voices and laughter floated from windows. Somewhere down the block, someone was playing football in the yard, shouts and thumps carrying on the air.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from Jared.

Where are you, man? People keep asking, “Where’s your mystery friend?”

I texted back with numb fingers: I went to the wrong address. Long story. Sorry. Happy Thanksgiving.

His reply came quickly. Dude. Only you. We already ate. You okay?

I stared at the screen. For once, I decided not to fake it.

Not really, I typed. But I will be.

I drove home to my apartment, parked in the garage under the bland building, rode the elevator up with a family balancing Tupperware and pie plates and a sleepy toddler in a turkey hat. Their joy felt like something playing on the other side of a glass wall.

In my kitchen, the beige walls felt closer than usual. The pie tin I’d baked that morning was gone, sitting in someone else’s fridge. Maybe they’d throw it out. Maybe they’d eat it begrudgingly. Maybe they’d never touch it.

I sat on my couch in the flicker of a football game’s late-night recap and tried not to think about the way Maggie’s eyes had softened when she’d tasted my gravy. The way Bob’s suspicion had cracked for one second during my rambling gratitude speech. The way Kate had looked at me when I’d said she deserved better.

I failed.

Two days later, back at the food company’s office in downtown Minneapolis, fluorescent lights buzzed overhead and the hum of post-holiday catch-up filled the open floor. I sat at my desk running numbers on a new protein bar formulation when my phone buzzed again.

Unknown number.

Is this Cameron Rhodes?

For half a second, my stomach dropped—like maybe Bob had hired a lawyer.

Yes, I typed. Who’s this?

A few seconds passed.

This is Kate. From Thanksgiving. Your fake girlfriend.

I exhaled so sharply my coworker in the next cubicle glanced over the partition.

Hey, I replied. I’m really, really sorry about—

My mother will not stop talking about your gravy, she wrote.

I blinked.

What?

She says, and I’m quoting, “That boy made the best gravy I’ve had in forty years.” And she’s been cooking Thanksgiving since the Reagan administration, so that’s saying something.

Despite everything, I smiled.

Please tell her thank you, I wrote. And tell her I’m sorry I—

Also, she wants the recipe.

Of course she did.

It’s not really a recipe, I typed. More of a method. But I can write it up.

Also, I tried your pie. You left it. We ate it after you left.

My fingers hovered over the keys.

And? I wrote.

It was really good, she replied. Your grandmother knew what she was doing.

My throat tightened again.

Yeah, I wrote. She did.

Look, she continued after a moment. I’m a chef at Harvest Moon downtown. We’re always working on menu development. I’m interested in food science. If you’re not a complete maniac, which remains to be seen, I’d like to talk about what you do. Professionally. Food engineering, texture, shelf life, all that.

Are you… asking me to meet you? I typed.

I’m asking if you want to grab a coffee and talk about starches and emulsifiers, she wrote. That’s it. My family would probably faint if they knew I was meeting The Impostor.

I hesitated.

Your family probably hates me, I wrote.

My mom says you have kind eyes and good energy, she replied. My dad says you’re either a con artist or genuinely nice and he can’t decide which. Frank says you make good gravy and that’s all that matters.

And you? I asked, before I could stop myself.

Long pause.

I think you showed up at the wrong house on the worst day of my life, she wrote, and somehow made it… slightly less terrible. You made my mom happy even though you were lying the whole time. Which is confusing.

I wasn’t lying, I wrote. I just… didn’t correct the misunderstanding.

That’s what lying is, Cameron.

Fair.

So, coffee? she sent. Wednesday, 2 p.m. Café Allegro on University. Do not go to the wrong address.

I stared at the screen and felt something shift inside my ribs—small, tentative, but real.

I’ll triple check the GPS, I wrote. See you Wednesday.

Café Allegro was one of those American campus coffee shops that tried very hard not to feel like a chain, even though you knew there were at least ten of them scattered around the Midwest. Exposed brick, Edison bulbs, chalkboard menu full of fancy lattes and single-origin pour-overs.

Kate was already there when I walked in, sitting at a corner table by the window, a mug cradled in her hands. She wore jeans, boots, and a soft gray sweater instead of a chef’s jacket. Her hair was down around her shoulders. She looked different. Softer. Or maybe I was just seeing her in a different kind of light.

For a second, I hovered by the door, wondering if she’d change her mind when she saw me.

Then she looked up, saw me, and raised her hand in a small wave.

I ordered a coffee, palms sweating, then walked over.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she said.

We stared at each other for a long beat.

“For the record,” she said at last, “I Googled you. You do exist. You are a food engineer. You did graduate from Colorado State. You do work for NorthStar Foods. So at least that part was real.”

“Everything I told your family was real,” I said, sitting down. “Except my name. And the part about knowing you. Which, yeah, is… pretty huge.”

“That’s kind of a big exception,” she agreed dryly.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

“Why didn’t you leave?” she asked, cutting straight to it. “When you realized we thought you were Trevor, why didn’t you just say, ‘Wrong house, sorry’ and go find your actual dinner?”

I thought about the beige walls. The frozen dinners. The echo of my grandmother’s laughter in my head.

“Because,” I said slowly, “your mother opened the door and looked so happy to see me that I… forgot how to disappoint her. Because your house smelled like my grandmother’s kitchen. Because your family sounded like mine used to before people started dying and moving away. Because I moved here for work and I’ve spent two months eating alone, and last week, for the first time, it felt like I was… somewhere.”

I shrugged helplessly. “I know that doesn’t excuse what I did. It was selfish. But it’s the truth.”

Kate looked down at her mug, then back up at me.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, “my real boyfriend never showed up to a single family dinner. Not once in six months. Said he was too busy. Too tired. Too something. Meanwhile, you walked into the wrong house, made gravy, and made my mom like you in two hours.”

“I think your mom would like almost anyone who shows up with pie,” I said.

“Don’t underestimate her standards,” Kate said. “But yeah. The pie helped.”

We both smiled, the tension in the air thinning slightly.

We ended up talking for two hours.

She told me about Harvest Moon, the restaurant where she worked—how they focused on seasonal Midwestern ingredients, how she’d fought to get more plant-based options on the menu without scaring off the steak-and-potatoes regulars, how the line cooks were a second family and also occasionally a nightmare.

I told her about my job—how we worked with big food companies across the U.S., tweaking formulations so frozen dinners stayed creamy in the microwave and cookies didn’t go stale. How I missed the hands-on part of cooking that my job rarely allowed. How my grandmother had let me ruin entire batches of biscuits just so I’d understand what “overworking the dough” really meant.

We talked about Colorado and Minnesota winters, about campus life and holiday specials, about what it meant to feed people for a living—her from the hot line, me from a lab bench.

At one point, she laughed at something I said and covered her mouth with her hand, like she wasn’t used to the sound.

When the sun started dipping and the light slanted gold into the café, she glanced at her watch.

“I have to get to the restaurant,” she said reluctantly. “We’re doing a post-Thanksgiving specials menu. Turkey pot pie and cranberry glaze. Because Americans will buy anything if you call it seasonal.”

“I believe that,” I said. “Pumpkin spice everything.”

She stood, shrugged on her coat, then looked at me.

“Same time next week?” she asked. “I still have questions about starch retrogradation.”

I smiled. “I can talk about starch for hours.”

“Terrifying,” she said. “But kind of impressive.”

We met again the next Wednesday. And the one after that. Coffee dates that weren’t dates, not officially. Conversations that started with food science and drifted into childhood stories, failed relationships, weird customer requests at the restaurant (“Can you make the salmon less fishy?”), and the time I’d accidentally turned an entire test batch of pudding into rubber.

Winter deepened around Minneapolis. Snow fell in heavy, quiet blankets. The river froze at the edges. People bought big-screen TVs for the Super Bowl and Christmas trees for their living rooms. My beige apartment started to feel less like a storage unit for one human and more like a home, mostly because I spent less time staring at the walls and more time thinking about the woman who’d called me “your fake girlfriend” in a text message.

About a month after that first coffee, Kate texted me on a Sunday afternoon.

My parents keep asking when they get to meet “Cameron,” she wrote. The real version.

My heart jumped. What did you tell them? I asked.

That you exist, and that you’re not a con artist, she wrote. My dad still insists on meeting you in person before he stops calling you “the mystery man.” Are you free next Sunday? Family dinner. Real, official invite this time. Under your actual name.

I stared at those words for a full minute.

I’d spent my first Thanksgiving in Minneapolis with her family by accident. The idea of going back on purpose felt… big.

Yes, I wrote, before I could talk myself out of it. I’d like that.

Don’t worry, she replied. I’ll warn them not to expect Trevor.

The following Sunday, I stood once again on the porch of 243 Emerald Street—this time triple-checking the number before ringing the bell. My hands were full again: a bottle of wine and a pan of rolls brushed with garlic butter. A peace offering, in carbohydrate form.

Maggie opened the door.

This time, she didn’t mistake me for anyone else.

“Cameron,” she said, smiling wide, flour dusted on her apron. “Good. You came. Of course you came. Come in, honey.”

She pulled me into the same warm, chaotic house, and this time I didn’t feel like an impostor wandering onto someone else’s stage.

“This is for you,” I said, holding out the pan. “Garlic herb rolls.”

“If these taste half as good as your gravy, you might start a revolution,” she said. “Bob! He’s here. Behave yourself.”

Bob appeared, arms folded, appraising me like I was applying for a job.

“Cameron,” he said.

“Bob,” I said.

We stared at each other for a moment. Then he held out his hand.

“You make one more memorable gravy,” he said, “and I might forgive you for Thanksgiving.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said, shaking his hand.

Kate rounded the corner, wiping her hands on a dish towel, cheeks flushed from the oven heat. She was wearing jeans and a faded Vikings T-shirt this time, hair pulled back in a ponytail. She smiled when she saw me, and something warm unfurled in my chest.

“You didn’t get lost this time,” she teased.

“I had three people fact-check the address,” I said. “I wasn’t taking chances.”

Frank nodded from his recliner. “Good,” he said. “Would have been a shame to waste good rolls.”

Jake lifted his gaze from his phone long enough to give me a nod. “Hey,” he said. “You’re the guy, right? The one who pretended to be Trevor.”

“Long story,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “We heard all of them.”

We all laughed.

Dinner was easier that night. There were still questions, but the edge was gone. They asked about my family in Colorado. I told them about my parents and my grandmother, about my little sister who worked as a nurse in Denver and sent me selfies with patients’ dogs. They asked about my job; I explained it in less jargon. They told me stories about Kate as a child—her first disastrous attempts at pancakes, the time she’d fed the family cat an entire plate of bacon during a holiday brunch.

We did the gratitude circle again. When it came to me, I looked around the table, at these people who had been strangers two months ago and who now felt like a piece of something I’d been missing.

“I’m grateful,” I said, “for wrong addresses.”

They laughed, but it was a soft laugh, the kind that meant they understood.

Spring came eventually, in that hesitant way northern U.S. cities do it—snow melting in gray piles, then refreezing, then finally surrendering to tiny green shoots pushing up along sidewalks. The Mississippi thawed. Streets filled with runners and bikers again. Café patios dusted off their metal tables.

By April, Sunday dinner at the Kellermans’ had become a regular thing. Sometimes it was pot roast. Sometimes it was tacos. Sometimes it was “Everyone bring something and we’ll see what happens.”

One Sunday evening, I stood in Maggie’s kitchen stirring a pot of marinara while she chopped fresh basil and told me about the year Bob tried to deep-fry the turkey and almost lit half the neighborhood on fire. Frank argued with Jake in the living room about the Twins’ chances this season. The TV murmured in the background with an early baseball game.

“Hand me the pepper,” Maggie said, and I did. “You know, for a man who walked into the wrong house like something out of a movie, you’ve fit yourself into this family pretty quickly.”

“Is that a compliment or a warning?” I asked.

“A little of both,” she said, smiling. “We’re loud. We’re nosy. We keep track of each other. It’s what we do.”

Kate walked in then, setting a salad bowl on the counter. She leaned over and kissed my cheek, smelling like tomatoes and fresh bread. It was so casual, so easy, that I barely registered it until Maggie made a soft, happy sound and turned away to give us a moment.

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no big cinematic scene where we declared our undying love. It happened slowly. Over coffee and shared plates at Harvest Moon when she invited me to “test” a new appetizer. Over roasted chickens and wine on my tiny balcony. Over laughter in grocery aisles and long walks along the river after her late shifts.

By the time the next Thanksgiving rolled around, the wrong-address disaster of the year before had become one of the Kellerman family’s favorite stories.

“Tell it again,” Zoe—no, that was the little girl next door in another man’s life; in this one, it was Maggie’s neighbor’s grandchild, and my timeline had overlapped—no. That was Tom’s story, not mine.

In mine, it was Emma, my sister’s daughter, visiting from Colorado for the holiday. She sat at the Kellermans’ table next to Jake, listening wide-eyed as Kate, with great drama, reenacted my dazed expression that first night.

“He walks in with this pie,” she said, gesturing to me with her fork, “and my mom just assumes he’s the guy I’ve been dating. And he just lets her. For three hours.”

“I tried to say something,” I protested. “I swear I did.”

“You had so many chances,” Bob said, grinning now. “At least twelve.”

“You have to admit,” Maggie said, “once we heard he was a food engineer, we were invested.”

“Gravy,” Frank said, raising his glass. “It always comes back to the gravy.”

“Always,” Maggie agreed.

Later that night, after the table was cleared and leftovers tucked into the fridge, Kate and I stepped out onto the porch. The street was quiet, lit by the soft glow of porch lights and the occasional flicker of a TV through a living room window.

It looked like the Thanksgiving I’d seen through someone else’s window a year before. Only this time, I was inside the story instead of standing on the sidewalk.

“Do you remember what you said,” Kate asked, leaning against the railing, “the first time you left this house?”

“Which time?” I asked. “When your dad told me to get out before he called the cops?”

She laughed. “No, before that. In the hallway. You said I deserved better than someone who broke up with me by text.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You did. You do.”

She looked at me for a long moment, eyes reflecting the porch light.

“I’m glad you got lost,” she said softly.

“Me too,” I said.

I thought of all the wrong turns that had led me here—to this porch, this city, this woman. The job posting I’d almost ignored. The apartment with beige walls I’d almost refused. The coworker who’d decided we were friends and invited me to Thanksgiving. The GPS glitch that turned “234” into “243” and changed the course of my year.

Sometimes the wrong address is exactly where you’re supposed to end up.

I reached for Kate’s hand. She laced her fingers through mine like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Inside, I could hear Maggie laughing, Bob arguing affectionately about football with Frank, the clink of dishes being washed, the soundtrack of an American holiday in full swing.

For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t standing outside the window wishing I were in there.

I was home.