PART 10
Lucy turned eight this past June.
We had the party in the backyard again, under a new string of paper lanterns, and I stood by the drink table the entire afternoon and poured every cup myself. Some habits don’t get unlearned. Some shouldn’t be.
Michael caught me watching the side gate at one point — the same gate the camera had caught eighteen months earlier.
“She’s not coming,” he said.
“I know.”
Lucy blew out her candles on the first try, laughing so hard she nearly missed one, and for the first time in over a year, the moment didn’t feel like a test I was running. It felt like a birthday.
That night, after the guests left, I found the pink unicorn cup at the back of Lucy’s cabinet — chipped now, two years old, a relic from a night I will never fully put down. I almost threw it out.
