Invisible String

14

I caught mom gently rocking Mira by the window, humming an old lullaby she used to sing to me as a baby. My dad was deep in conversation with Travis’s dad over barbecue technique, and Austin had taken it upon himself to teach Wyatt how to do cartwheels in the grass.

There was so much love in the room, so much history and hope and warmth—and yet, underneath it, I couldn’t stop the thought from creeping in: What if this doesn’t last? What if Mira gets taken away?

But then Lily ran up, holding her arms out.

“Mama! We do candles now?”

I blinked back the sting in her eyes and smiled. “Yeah, baby. Let’s do candles.”

I scooped Lily up, and for just that moment, nothing else existed but her little girl’s laughter and the joy of another year gone by. A year of love, of growth, and now—of fighting like hell to keep everything that mattered.

The party wound down in that familiar whirlwind way—wrapping paper everywhere, half-eaten cupcakes on every surface, and kids beginning to crash from their sugar highs one by one.

I stood barefoot in the kitchen, Mira in one arm, slowly bobbing her as she dozed off, while trying to rinse out a punch bowl with the other. I turned to find Kylie behind her, hair in a messy ponytail, scooping uneaten pasta salad into Tupperware like a woman on a mission.

“Don’t you dare touch those dishes,” Kylie warned playfully. “Go sit. You’re holding a baby, for crying out loud.”

“But you’ve got four kids and—” I started.

Kylie rolled her eyes. “Exactly. Which means I’ve developed octopus arms over the years. I got this.”

Jason, meanwhile, was standing in the middle of the living room holding Bennett upside down by his ankles while Wyatt clung to his leg yelling, “Again! Again!” Finnley was toddling around pulling streamers off the furniture, and Elliott had taken it upon herself to organize Lily’s new toy pile with deeply serious determination.

Austin had a garbage bag in one hand and a paper plate with cake in the other, half-eaten. “I’m multitasking,” he said when Taylor raised an eyebrow. “I clean, I snack, I supervise chaos.”

Travis was doing his best to wrangle Lily into pajamas in the back room, but every five minutes she bolted back into the party, shouting things like “Wait! I forgot to hug Wyatt!” or “My unicorn wand is in the bathroom!”

I watched all of it unfold with a kind of awe. My family—my real family—stepping up and helping, not because they had to, but because they wanted to. Because they loved Lily. Because they loved her.

Jason finally plopped Bennett down on the couch and gave him a snack to keep him occupied. “You want us to stay until the tornado dies down?” he asked, only half joking.

“That might be another ten years,” I quipped.

“Lucky for you,” Austin added, tossing a plate into the trash, “we’re the best damn cleanup crew in Tennessee.”

I smiled, Mira now asleep in my arms, her tiny lips pursed in a dream. I walked into the living room and laid her down gently in the bassinet by the couch.

“Thank you, really,” I said to them all. “I don’t even have words.”

“You don’t need ‘em,” Kylie replied, tossing a juice box into the recycling. “This is what we do. We show up. And you—" she gave me a tired but warm smile—“you’re doing amazing.”

It wasn’t just a party. It was proof they weren’t alone. Even in the storm.

The sun was starting to dip lower, casting a golden hue across the backyard, where remnants of Lily’s third birthday party were still scattered—deflated balloons, half-eaten cupcakes, and sticky sippy cups. I stood by the patio door, swaying slightly with Mira asleep on my chest in the carrier, watching as our closest friends and family tried to tame the chaos.