Page 7 of Enchanted to Meet You

12:30 PM: Guided Venue Tour

1:00 PM: Opening Circle: Sharing Our Journeys

1:30 PM: Baby Shower Games (Prizes Included!)

2:15 PM: Gift Opening

3:00 PM: Dessert + Wishes for Baby

3:45 PM: Group Photos

4:00 PM: Mom- and dad-to-be send off

Brunch, laughter, and a few surprises to celebrate the journey that brought us here and all the unexpected blessings of the last year.

Can’t wait to hug you all!!

xo Hilary

I was going to be sick. What the heck was wrong with this woman? Couldn’t she just accept that we didn’t want to spend time with her? That we didn’t want to know her? She was the reason our family has been torn apart, and now she expected us to come celebrate her baby like it wasn’t a symbol of our dad leaving us to start over with someone else?

Sebastian snatched the invitation out of my hand, his face getting angrier with every line he read. Nora read it over his shoulder, eyes widening with each line. Then Lavender took it from him, her cheeks getting red with anger the further she got down the card. Then Dean from her, and so on until the whole room had read it and was expressing various degrees of seething.

“I hate that she’s calling it Baby Novak?” Lavender demanded, yanking the invitation back and glaring down at it. “She’s not even a Novak.”

Technically, given that this was Dad’s baby, Baby Novak wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t about to correct her on that. Lavender had a very hard time when Dad left, so if this makes her feel better, who am I to stop her?

“What do we think Opening Circle: Sharing Our Journeys means?” Nora asked.

“Group therapy disguised as a baby shower?” Dean suggested.

“I think I would actually prefer an hour of group therapy with that woman than to celebrate this,” Lavender muttered, tossing the invitation onto the table out of sight and grabbing a hashbrown for herself this time.

That got an actual laugh out of me, sharp and sudden, the kind that surprised you on the way out. The tight feeling in my chest loosened just a little.

“Oh my gosh, there’s a dress code,” Imogen said, reading the invitation off from where it sat on the table, almost like she was afraid to touch it. “Garden party chic. Are we supposed to cosplay as people who are okay with this?”

“Don’t forget the white or neutrals so you look good in the group photo,” Nora said cheerfully.

“Of course it is,” Imogen groaned. “Nothing says ‘blended family’ like all wearing coordinated outfits.”

I reached over and plucked the invitation from the table, scanning it again like it might get better.

“Wishes for baby,” Sebastian said. “What are we supposed to write? Congrats on existing, sorry about your parents?”

“We should RSVP ‘no’,” Lavender said, her voice still angry, but far less so than Sebastian’s.

“But she’ll still expect a gift,” Imogen said. “Maybe we send, like, a mountain of baby onesies.”

“A mountain of neutral baby onesies,” Nora added.

“Mountain of garden party style baby onesies,” I said.

That did it. Everyone dissolved again, overlapping laughter filling the room, loud and messy and familiar. I dropped onto the couch where Imogen and Cole had sat back down, landing half on Imogen’s lap and knocking my head against hers accidentally.

I glanced down at the invitation in my hand, at the perfect calligraphy and the carefully chosen words, all that effort to make something messy look beautiful.

“Are we actually going to respond?” I asked.