You would remember those words later with the kind of bitterness that lives a long time.
At first, the evening moved the way these evenings always did. Too much laughter, too much bourbon, too much pretending. Your father told the same three stories about his career in commercial real estate, each one polished into legend over time until he sounded less like a man who bought office parks and more like a war hero who had liberated downtown Cleveland with a spreadsheet. Guests nodded on cue. Rebecca laughed a beat too hard. Your mother refilled glasses before anyone had to ask.
Lily stayed close to you at first.
She wore white sandals and carried a stuffed rabbit with one bent ear, though she kept setting it down and forgetting where. She was small for her age, with dark curls and wide, observant eyes that made strangers lower their voices without knowing why. She had Ben’s patience and your tendency to study a room before deciding whether it was safe.
She didn’t like your father.
Not openly. Not in a way anyone could accuse her of. But children have instincts adults often train themselves out of, and Lily always went a little quiet when Thomas was near. He thought it was shyness. You knew better. She felt the temperature drop when he entered a room, the same way you had once felt it as a child and spent years learning to read as warning.
By seven-thirty, the kitchen had become the gravitational center of the party.
People clustered around the marble island, opening bottles, rearranging platters, arguing lightly about football. There were tubs of ice by the back door, coolers filled with soda and beer, a cake box the size of a suitcase resting unopened on the far counter. Your father liked excess in visible forms. It impressed people who had never looked closely at what it cost others.
You were in the dining room with one of your mother’s church friends when Lily slipped away.
It was only for a minute. Maybe less. Long enough for her to pad into the kitchen on quiet little feet and spot the cooler near the mudroom door, the one stacked with canned sodas under a layer of crushed ice. She loved orange soda. You usually limited it to special occasions, which in toddler logic made it halfway between treasure and magic.
