44. Daisy
***Daisy***
"Happy birthday, dear Haaaaank! Happy birthday to you!"
Hank sat at the head of the picnic table like a tiny human, upright in his chair.
He had a glittery birthday hat strapped under his chin, smiling his too-human smile while three children and three grown men sang to him.
The kids had declared it his birthday at breakfast. When I pointed out that nobody actually knew Hank's birthday, probably including Hank, Hazel informed me the date had been decided at breakfast and voting was closed.
I hushed right up. Where I come from, you don't argue with an adorable child with conviction.
Wes came from the grill carrying a plate like he was presenting a crown roast to a visiting king.
On it sat the most beautiful cheeseburger I’d ever seen, toasted bun, perfect char, a single blue birthday candle burning in the center.
He’d spent forty minutes on it while muttering that it was absolutely not for the dog.
The song wound down and Hank’s eyes found mine over the flame. Just for a second. My little demon in a paper crown, at the head of a table full of people neither of us had in our lives just two months ago. Then Poppy yelled at him to make a wish and the moment was gone.
“Blow it out, Hank! Big breath!”
Hank did the opposite of a big breath. He inhaled it in one bite. The candle went out and disappeared down his gullet.
“That took me forty minutes.” Wes stared at the empty plate amazed.
“He loved it,” Hazel said. “You can tell because it’s gone.”
“Where’s the candle?” Charlie was already under the table. “Is it in him? Is he gonna poop out his own birthday candle?”
“Maybe we don’t talk about Hank’s poop while we’re eating,” Wes said.
“That’s never stopped us before,” Poppy pointed out, which was a fair point.
We settled in with our own burgers and Poppy launched into the story of the hat.
“We made it with Aunt Daisy today. It took two tries because Charlie’s first one didn’t survive testing.”
“Testing?” Flynn looked at his son. “What kind of testing does a paper hat need?”
“I threw it off the dock to see if it could fly.” Charlie shrugged. “It couldn’t.”
“So we made this one with the good glue and Hazel did the measuring.” Poppy pointed a fry at the hat. “I did the glitter so Hank would be sparkly.”
Max turned Hank’s head gently with one finger under his chin, studying the hat from every angle while Hank sat gracious in his sparkly glory. “Good seams. Chin strap’s smart.”
“That was me.” There was no hiding how pleased Hazel was. “The first one kept sliding off when he shook, so I added the strap and reinforced the crown points with cereal box.”
“Structural integrity.” Wes nodded at his daughter with complete seriousness. “That’s how the Romans did it.”
“The Romans made dog hats?”
“The Romans made everything, Charlie.”
I sat in the middle of the noise with my feet up on the bench next to Flynn’s thigh and let my happy feelings wash over me.
Then the trouble started, the way trouble always started around here, with Flynn clapping his hands together. “Alright, it’s time for the main event.”
The main event was a slip and slide the length of a runway, purchased “for the kids,” a claim that fooled no one, seeing as Flynn called first turn before the hose was attached.
His maiden voyage was one for the record books.
He took a running start, hit the plastic at full speed, and a third of the way down, physics and his swim trunks came to a violent disagreement.
The trunks lost and he emerged from the bottom of the slip and slide with the world’s biggest wedgie.
“Oh my God.“ I doubled over the table.
“Dad got eaten by his shorts!” Charlie was on the ground.
Flynn stood, extracted polyester from places polyester should never be, and took a full bow. “Someone had to test the speed. You’re welcome.”
After that it was chaos of the best kind. The kids went down in fits of giggles while Hank decided the slip and slide was a weapons delivery system and began launching his body at anyone within six feet of it.
I was not participating. I was at the edge of the grass in my sundress with my hair up, supervising, the way a responsible nanny does, when the back of my neck prickled. I turned around and Hank was already airborne.
Sixty pounds of overweight Basset Hound hit me at chest height and I went backwards into Wes, who caught me on instinct and lost the war when my momentum met his wet feet on wet grass.
We went down the slide together, tangled up, water up my nose, his arm locked around my waist the whole way.
We slid to a stop with me sprawled across his chest, both of us soaked, my careful hair flat against my head.
I braced for the grumpy Wes routine and got something better.
He was laughing hysterically and holding me against him.
When I tried to climb off him, he tightened his arm and pulled me back down.
“You did that on purpose,” I accused.
“That was one hundred percent your dog.” He tucked a soaked curl behind my ear, his voice dropping low enough to be just mine. “But I’d pay him to do it again.”
Then more cold water hit us both in the face, because Hazel had found the water guns.
The war was immediate and it was ugly. Hazel commanded the kids’ army like a general who takes no prisoners.
Poppy defected to whichever side had the fruit snacks, twice.
Charlie soaked everyone, including his own troops, once shooting himself directly in the face in a move nobody could explain.
Max claimed the high ground on the porch steps and picked people off one by one with terrifying accuracy, until Hazel sent Poppy up there to hug him, at which point he surrendered without a fight.
Hank stole a water gun early and carried it around in his mouth for the rest of the battle, a warlord without allegiance.
And me? I spent the entire war being trafficked.
Flynn snatched me behind the porch post and used me as a human shield without an ounce of shame, whispering “stay still, sweetheart, they can smell fear” against my ear while Hazel advanced.
When his position fell, Max hauled me over his shoulder and carried me to safety, which turned out to be a puddle, where he set me down with great care and shot me at point blank range.
Wes traded two water guns and a solemn ceasefire for custody of me, then violated the treaty within thirty seconds.
At some point I stopped keeping track of whose hands were catching me and whose chest I was tucked against, because I belonged to all six hands and nobody in that yard thought a thing about it.
Poppy’s only comment, delivered while reloading, was that I made a bad shield because I laughed too loud and gave away positions.
The war ended the way all wars end, with the losers eating cake.
I went inside for towels, and when I came back to the door, I stopped.
The three brothers were by the grill, wrung out and dripping, and they didn’t know I was there.
Wes said something too low for me to catch and Max laughed, actually laughed.
Flynn snapped his wet shirt at Wes’s leg and for one second, they weren’t wounded grown men anymore. They were just brothers having fun.
“Best summer we’ve had out here in years,” Flynn said, and he wasn’t saying it for my benefit, which is exactly why it went through my heart like an arrow. “Maybe ever.”
“Yeah.” Wes was quiet for a beat. “It feels like it used to. When Mom and Dad had us running this yard.” Then he flipped his spatula and pointed it at Flynn. “Except back then you cried when you got a wedgie.”
“I’ve grown.”
“We all know why it’s the best summer.” Max said it without looking up from the cooler he was digging through. “Same reason the kitchen smells like vanilla.”
Nobody argued with him, they all just looked at each other and smiled.
Nobody teased him for it either, which for this family was the same as a standing ovation.
I stood in the doorway my hands clenching tighter around the towels and understood something I’d been too scared to look at straight.
All summer I’d been terrified I was the crack running through this family.
I’d never once added up what I might be mending.
The light was going gold by the time everyone was dried off and fed cake, including a dog-safe cupcake for the birthday criminal, who tried to eat it with the hat still on until Hazel held the chin strap back like she was holding a drunk friend’s hair.
I was gathering plates, half in and half out of my old pull to be useful, when Hank looked at me.
One of his too-human looks he’d been aiming at Wes and Max all summer.
He held it just long enough for me to feel seen, then heaved himself off his chair, stole Charlie’s towel right off his shoulders, and trotted for the dock with it.
All three kids took off after him, screaming about revenge, until they were three small shapes and one set of enormous ears against the water.
Leaving the porch to me and my three men.
I’d swear on my stand mixer Hank did it on purpose.
We ended up tangled together on the porch swing in the last of the light. My feet rested in Flynn’s lap while his thumbs worked slowly over my arches, Wes had one arm stretched behind me along the back of the swing, and I’d somehow drifted into Max’s side with my head tucked against his shoulder.
“Next year we’re getting the big slip and slide for Hank’s birthday.” Flynn squeezed my ankle. “The forty-footer. They make a forty-footer.”
“Absolutely not,” Wes said. “Someone could have gotten injured.”
“I don’t know, you seemed to enjoy your ride,” Max teased.
Next year. The words just sat there warm as the grill coals, and nobody rushed to take them back.
Not one of the three men around me so much as shifted his weight.
I hadn’t cooked today. I hadn’t cleaned, because Max had slipped inside during cake and handled the kitchen without a word.
I hadn’t earned a single minute of this day by working tirelessly, and they’d wanted me here anyway.
Soaked and grass-stained, my hair and makeup now a complete mess, doing nothing but being theirs.
Max bent down and softly kissed my forehead. “You make this place feel more like home.”
And just like that the little white sign in the window of Sweetwater Sweets and Treats floated up in my mind, the way it had been doing for days.
I tucked my face deeper into Max’s shoulder and made myself a promise.
Tomorrow, or the day after, I was going to be brave one more time and ask the question about what comes after.
But that was tomorrow’s bravery. Tonight I had a warm shoulder under my cheek, a thumb on my ankle, three kids and a criminal in a paper crown laughing down at the water, and the certainty that it could not possibly get any better than this.