Chapter 9 - The Unfinished Sentence
The party went on for three hours.
The cupcakes were eaten with varying degrees of enthusiasm, most of the frosting ending up on napkins rather than fingers. Lily presented her gift—a hardbound sketchbook with blank pages and a box of professional pencils—and Mia opened it right there on the grass, her fingers tracing the heavy, textured paper.
By four o'clock, the sun was beginning to dip behind the foothills, casting long, amber shadows across the pumpkin patch. The other girls had scattered down the gravel paths to look at the late-blooming sunflowers near the back fence, leaving just the two of us sitting on the low wooden bench by the gazebo.
Melissa sat beside me, her hands folded in her lap. The gold ring on her finger caught the last slanted rays of light through the pine trees.
"I'm sorry," she said. It wasn't the corporate, managed apology she used when a dinner party ran out of wine. It was small, rough around the edges, and hard for her to get out.
"I know," I said, putting my arm around her shoulders and drawing her in close against the October chill. "Me too."
"I was so afraid of her being alone," Melissa whispered, her voice cracking slightly. "I spent so many years watching her sit by herself before we met... I guess I lost my perspective on what kind of home we were actually building."
"We're building a bigger one," I said. "One with more doors."
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Across the garden, Zoe was laughing—not the high-pitched, performative laugh she used for her Instagram videos, but a real, unguarded sound as Maya showed her how to blow bubbles with a straw into a cup of apple cider. Next to them, Mia was sketching something in her new book with a silver pencil, her head bent close to Lily’s as they argued in whispers over whether the horse in the drawing should have a white star on its forehead or not.
The afternoon air was getting colder now, the kind of cold that promises frost by morning and clear stars by midnight.
