"It's abstract."
"It's a circle with some marks on it."
"That's a soccer ball.”
She's laughing; I'm watching her laugh instead of watching my cookie, and Harper somehow gets frosting on her hands and is delighted about it.
We both reach for the orange sprinkles at the same time.
Our hands collide over the container, and then neither of us moves.
Her fingers are touching mine. I can feel her pulse, or maybe that's mine, I can't tell anymore. She looks up at me, hazel eyes wide, and the whole table might as well not exist.
I can see Emma grinning in my peripheral vision.
Maya has her eyebrows raised.
Even Diane has a soft, knowing look.
Nora pulls her hand back first, grabbing the sprinkles and focusing very intently on her leaf-shaped cookie. I do the same.
"Uncle Tyler," Ethan announces, "you're doing it wrong."
"What am I doing wrong?"
"Footballs aren't blue."
"This is a special blue football."
"That's not a thing."
"It is now."
The cookie decorating continues, with Harper eventually getting her own small cookie to investigate, the table becoming a disaster of frosting, sprinkles, and happy noise.
Dinner is perfect. The turkey is golden, everything is warm, there are too many people around my dining table, and it's the best thing that's happened in this house since Harper arrived.
Our feet keep finding each other under the table, mine and Nora's. Neither of us comments on it.
After dinner, Emma insists on family photos. She lines everyone up in configurations: the kids together, the couples, the whole group.
"Tyler. Nora. Harper," she calls. "Your turn."
"We're not—" Nora starts.
"You're family. Come here."
So we do. I'm holding Harper, Nora's standing next to me with her hand on my shoulder, and Emma takes photo after photo.
"You look perfect," she says, showing us the screen.
We do. We look like what we keep pretending we're not.
By nine, everyone’s settled. Harper’s in her nursery. Emma and Chase have Nora’s room with the kids, and Diane has mine. Jackson and Maya are at their hotel.
Which leaves Nora and me, both downstairs, with sleeping bags on opposite sides of the living room.
We spend an hour doing dishes in comfortable silence, our usual rhythm, everything feeling slightly too warm and too close given what's happened today. The sprinkles. The hand. The way Emma looked at us.