Chapter 4

Mia opened her mouth and closed it. Mum gave her a look and she didn't speak.

Dad drew a breath.

"I know what you're all thinking. Why are we throwing a party for someone else while our own daughter stands here having been told nothing? The answer is — we owe her. We owe her more than we know how to say."

He stopped. Swallowed. When he spoke again, his voice had changed.

"When Sophie was ten years old, her mother and I started missing her birthdays. We were always busy — projects, trips, commitments that felt urgent. Every time, we told ourselves: next year. Next year we'll make it up to her. And every year, we watched the light go out of her eyes a little more."

"She went from a little girl who laughed at everything, to someone quieter and quieter. More and more distant. She stopped expecting anything from us. Stopped trusting anything we said. We didn't know how to reach her."

His eyes had come back to me. He hadn't looked away once.

I was standing completely still.

This wasn't what I'd planned.

"So we tried something — something foolish." His expression broke into a bleak, brief smile. "We hired a team of event planners. Their daughter, Mia, agreed to help. We staged the whole thing — the group chat, the group name, the scene she'd walk in on. We designed it so every piece of it would make her angry. We needed her angry. We needed her so full of ten years of hurt and fury that when the truth came out, she might — just might — believe us."

He turned slightly.

"Because if we'd simply told her we wanted to throw her a party, she would have said no. She doesn't believe us any more. And she has every reason not to."

The lights went out.

Every light in the room, all at once.

I grabbed Jamie's arm without thinking.

Then the screen at the back of the stage lit up.

Not Mia's Instagram photos. Not the party's promotional images.

A photograph of me.

Me at five, pigtails, gap-toothed, laughing like nothing in the world could ever be wrong.