I looked at Travis, trying to understand what he had prepared and why his mother recognized it immediately.
He did not look triumphant.
That mattered to me.
He looked like a father who had hoped the thing he prepared would never need to leave an overnight bag.
Zia remained beside him, watching Lorraine rather than the reactions around the table.
The same child who had asked the night before whether Travis would still be her dad was now the person deciding whether Lorraine would be allowed to keep treating that relationship as temporary whenever it suited her.
Lorraine lifted the folded white card from the box.
Her hands were no longer as steady as they had been when she wrote Guest on Zia’s place card that morning.
She unfolded it once.
Then again.
The room waited.
At the top of the card was the beginning of a message Lorraine clearly had not expected to receive.
