The party she’d carefully staged began falling apart around her.

She wanted us isolated.

Instead, the room chose Mia.

Gregory picked up the cooler.

“I’m driving them home,” he said.

Thomas’s sister grabbed the daisies.

Two cousins followed.

Eleanor stared after them.

“You’re leaving my birthday?”

I took Mia’s hand.

Eleanor hurried after us.

“Alexis, don’t do this.”

I turned back.

“You won’t call Mia. You won’t visit her. You won’t send messages through anyone else.”

“You can’t keep my granddaughter from me.”

“I can keep my daughter away from someone who hurts her on purpose.”

Her expression tightened.

“You’re making rules now?”

“No.”

“I’m finally enforcing them, and Thomas will stand with me.”

Back at our house, Gregory rolled the grill out of the garage while Mia opened the cooler.

“Can I help?”

“You can hand me the tools,” he said. “You can also stop me if I burn anything.”

“I don’t know how, Grandpa.”

“Then we’ll both learn, sweetheart.”

Thomas’s sister spread our picnic blanket across the yard.

The cousins set out plates and drinks.

Before long, nobody cared that they were still wearing formal clothes.

My phone rang just as Gregory lowered the grill lid.

It was Thomas.

“What happened?” he asked.

I told him everything—the fake invitation, the deleted message, Mia’s little book, and Eleanor’s reaction.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

“Alexis, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not.”

He paused.

“You’re not?”

I watched Gregory teaching Mia how to use the tongs while Thomas’s sister arranged the daisies in a glass jar. The cousins laughed as smoke drifted across the yard.

“Your mother tried to prove Mia didn’t belong,” I said. “Instead, everyone had to choose.”

“And?”

“They chose her.”

Thomas let out a slow breath.

“What do you need from me?”

“Back the boundary, Thomas. That’s what we need. That’s what Mia needs.”

“You have my word.”

Later that evening, Mia accidentally dripped barbecue sauce across the purple cover of her handmade book.

“Mom, I ruined it.”

I stopped her before she could wipe it away.

“No.”

“It finally made it to the barbecue.”

She looked around the backyard.

“Do you think Grandma will learn?”

“That’s up to her.”

I wrapped an arm around Mia as Gregory called her back to the grill.

Eleanor had spent years deciding who counted as family.

That night, I stopped letting her make that decision for us.