[ELARA'S POV]
Isla turned one on a Tuesday in March, and the living room looked like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol had exploded.
Pink balloons clustered against the vaulted ceiling like giant bubbles. Streamers twisted down the curtains in ribbons of fuchsia and rose gold. The caterers had set up a dessert table that belonged in a magazine spread: a three-tiered smash cake covered in buttercream rosettes, cupcakes arranged in perfect spirals, sugar cookies shaped like crowns that I'd ordered before remembering we'd literally destroyed a crown to protect our family.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
Isla sat in her high chair wearing a white dress with pink tulips embroidered across the chest. It had cost three hundred dollars. It would be ruined in approximately four minutes when we let her at that cake. Her dark hair was finally long enough for the tiny bow Marguerite had insisted on clipping in. She kept reaching up to yank it out, pudgy fingers grabbing at ribbons.
