She had spent weeks preparing for that day, though no one had seen the preparation except her father and the quiet walls of their small home, where crayons rolled across the table and glitter stuck stubbornly to everything except the places she wanted it most. Twenty-five invitations had been written in uneven handwriting, each one decorated with tiny drawings of crowns and motorcycles, because Sophie loved both things equally and saw no reason why the world should separate them.
“Do you think they’ll come early?” she had asked that morning, her voice bright with a hope that felt too big for something so fragile.
Her father, Thomas Bennett, had smiled in that careful way adults do when they want to believe something as much as their children do. “Some of them might,” he replied, adjusting the collar of the small pink jacket he had given her—a miniature version of his own riding jacket, soft leather with “Dad’s Co-Pilot” stitched across the back in silver thread.
Thomas had spent months saving for that day, though Sophie didn’t know the details of how those months had unfolded, how mornings began before sunrise with the rumble of a sanitation truck and afternoons ended in a warehouse where shelves never seemed to empty, how weekends disappeared into a cramped garage filled with tools and half-repaired engines that brought in just enough extra income to keep things moving forward.Continue reading…