34. Buzz #2
Alois looked down. “No.”
Bento climbed higher.
Bobby leaned toward me. “The cat always wins.”
“I’m getting that.”
Across the yard, Lucy was laughing. Her hand covered part of her mouth, and her shoulders shook once before she got herself under control. Dottie sat at her feet, watching the diaper table like she believed someone had hidden whipped cream inside the dolls.
The next game was the stroller obstacle course. Lo explained that it was meant to be “lighthearted.” The Frosthawks heard competition. These were not the same thing.
Someone had arranged a winding route across the grass with small cones, ribbons tied between garden stakes, a soft mat meant to simulate uneven terrain, and a final station where the participant had to retrieve a diaper bag from a bench without tipping the stroller.
“Absolutely not,” Cam said when Harry tried to put on goalie gloves for added difficulty.
“You fear innovation,” Harry told him.
“I fear lawsuits.”
Oliver’s twins were thrilled by the stroller. Reed’s middle child tried to climb into it and had to be gently extracted. Bobby crouched beside one of the wheels, examining the setup.
“That turn is too tight,” he told Alois.
Alois looked at the course. “Yes.”
“Are you going to fix it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because De Luca will hit the flowers.”
Bobby considered this. “Fair.”
The cat remained attached to Alois like a judgmental accessory, draped now over one forearm because Alois had given up removing him. Bento’s tail twitched every time Dottie looked in his direction.
Lucy murmured something to her pup and shortened the leash. Dottie wagged, which was her way of announcing she had heard the instruction and was considering a different interpretation.
I ended up beside Lucy because Lo handed me a stack of napkins and pointed toward the drinks table, and Lucy was already there refilling a pitcher of lemonade she was absolutely not supposed to be handling if Lo had any say in it.
“She told Bea not to lift a finger,” Lucy said before I could speak. “She did not specify the rest of us.”
I set the napkins down. “That sounds like a loophole.”
“It is.”
“Dangerous thing to admit in a lawyer-adjacent household.”
Her mouth moved. “My father is not a lawyer.”
“No, but he owns enough of them to make the air nervous.”
She looked at me then, and the smile almost happened. I lived on almost lately.
Bobby appeared at my elbow with a cookie shaped like a tiny hockey skate. “Are you doing the stroller thing?”
“Probably.”
“You good with strollers?”
“I have pushed many things with wheels.”
“That is not the same.”
“No, but confidence is important.”
“Not if it’s misplaced.”
Lucy made a small sound and looked down at the lemonade.
I stared at Bobby. “You’re tough.”
“I’m honest.”
“Terrible habit.”
“Alois says that.”
“Alois says many cheerful things.”
Bobby looked over his shoulder at Alois, who was standing in the sun with a cat in his arm, watching Bea, the stroller course, and Bobby all at once. “He’s not cheerful.”
“No,” Lucy tittered quietly. “But he’s a good one.”
Bobby looked at her like she had passed a test.
I looked at Lucy.
She felt me looking and adjusted her glasses. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Ty.”
The sound of my name in her mouth still had the power to rearrange me.
I nodded toward Bobby instead, because asking direct questions about Alois’s twelve-year-old best man in front of him seemed like bad form. “I have questions.”
Lucy’s gaze flicked to Bobby, then Alois, then back to me. Her expression softened in a way that told me there was a whole story there. A book behind a closed door.
Then Dottie barked. Not her normal bark. Not the one she used for squirrels or attention or whatever personal offense she took to delivery drivers.
Bento had finally decided he had tolerated enough dog proximity for one lifetime. He launched from Alois’s arm, hit grass, shot beneath the stroller course ribbon, and disappeared under the dessert table.
Dottie, loyal to chaos and very little else in that moment, lunged.
Lucy caught the leash, but the grass was slick in places from the sprinklers, and Dottie had momentum, ears flying, body committed to justice or friendship or whatever she thought cats required. The leash tugged Lucy forward half a step.
I caught the leash close to Dottie’s collar, dropping into a crouch before Dottie could pull Lucy—and possibly the whole drinks table—into the flower beds. “Hey, Dot,” I said, keeping my voice easy. “Bad plan. Entertaining, but bad.”
Dottie looked back at me, deeply betrayed.
Behind her, one of Oliver’s toddlers began crying because the cat had vanished, the dog had barked, and the stroller had rolled three inches into a cone.
Reed’s youngest laughed so hard she dropped half a cupcake frosting-side down into the grass.
Bobby darted toward the stroller, then froze when the crying got louder, not panicked exactly, but caught between wanting to help and not knowing which piece of the mess belonged to him.
The whole yard tilted toward us.
That was the moment old me might have made a joke too big. Might have turned the attention onto myself so the embarrassment had somewhere else to go. Might have scooped up a kid or tugged the dog or made noise until the space became easier for me.
Instead, I kept my hand light on Dottie’s leash and looked at Bobby. “Can you hold the stroller brake for me?”
He blinked once, then nodded like the job had put the ground back under him. “Yeah.” Bobby stepped to the stroller and pressed the brake down with his foot.
I looked at the crying toddler, who had turned red-faced and furious in Oliver’s arms. “Is she okay with dogs?”
Oliver glanced at me over his daughter’s head. “Usually.”
“Can Dottie help?” I asked her, not Oliver.
The toddler hiccuped.
Dottie, sensing a possible audience, sat down.
I loosened my grip on the leash but kept hold of it. “This is Dottie,” I said, still crouched in the grass. “She made a bad choice because she thinks the cat is her manager.”
The toddler’s sob stalled.
Bobby snorted.
Dottie wagged.
“She is very sorry,” I continued. “Mostly because she did not catch him.”
The toddler leaned slightly out of Oliver’s hold to inspect Dottie. “Dog.”
“Correct,” I said.
Dottie thumped her tail.
The kid laughed through one last wet hiccup.
Freya appeared with towels. Reed’s daughter picked up the fallen cupcake and announced that grass frosting was not safe.
Marco began narrating the cat’s escape until Cam told him to stop making it worse.
Alois walked to the dessert table, bent, and retrieved Bento from beneath it with the grim competence of a man disarming a device.
Bento looked entirely pleased with himself. Alois held him at eye level. “You are a problem.”
Bobby, still bracing the stroller, said, “You say that like he cares.”
Bea laughed from her chair, one hand pressed to her belly. Then her face crumpled for half a second with the force of it, the happiness and the exhaustion and the absurdity all folding together.
Rafa was beside her instantly. Not hovering like Alois. Not commanding like Lo. He simply knelt in the grass in front of his daughter and took her hand between both of his.
Whatever he said was too quiet for the rest of us.
Bea nodded, crying and smiling.
Alois saw it. His whole body went still, Bento tucked against his chest like a prisoner. For once, he did not move toward her. He let Rafa have the moment.
I looked down at Dottie. “You have caused significant damage to the vibe.”
She leaned into my knee, forgiven by herself.
“Typical,” Lucy said.
I turned my head.
She stood a few feet away with two glasses in her hands, sunlight catching in her hair. Her face was composed, but her eyes were not. They were soft in a way that made my chest ache. Soft and scared.
She held one glass out to me. Lemonade, sweating lightly in the warmth. “For crisis management,” she said.
I took it carefully, making sure my fingers did not trap hers. “Thank you, Lucy.”
Her gaze dipped to my hand, then returned to my face. “You handled that well.”
I looked down at Dottie. “She did most of the work.”
Lucy lifted one eyebrow. “Dottie?”
“She sat.”
The corner of her mouth moved. “Heroic.”
Arlo emerged beside Lucy, plate in hand, eyes moving from her to me to the drink I held. “Everything good?” There was nothing casual about the question.
I took one step back, giving the space to her before she had to ask for it. “Dottie tried to negotiate peace with Bento.”
Lucy glanced at me. The look was quick, but it carried something I did not know how to hold yet. Gratitude, maybe. Or relief. Or only recognition that I had not made Arlo’s suspicion her problem.
The stroller obstacle course resumed after Lo declared the incident “handled” and had a server quietly reset the cone Dottie had dragged six feet out of alignment.
Rafa won that too.
He approached the stroller with the same grave focus he had given the diaper table.
He adjusted the handle height. Checked the wheels.
Asked Reed’s oldest daughter to confirm the baby doll was secured properly.
Then he moved through the course with such smooth, controlled precision that Cam crossed his arms and muttered, “That’s better edgework than our second power-play unit. ”
Rafa reached the diaper bag station, lifted it without jostling the stroller, and finished with the kind of calm nod men gave after parallel parking in a snowstorm.
The yard went silent for one beat.
Then everyone applauded.
Rafa looked embarrassed, which made it funnier.
Bea was laughing and crying again. Alois had one hand on her shoulder now, his thumb moving once against the fabric of her dress, private comfort in public view.
Ezra clapped with genuine admiration. “That was impressive.”
Rafa lifted one shoulder. “S?o Paulo traffic.”
Marco looked betrayed. “That explains nothing and yet somehow everything.”