Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPQ9XFMTJYS3WHHFPY18WK

Molly spread the birthday invitation across the diner table like a treasure map. "Two o'clock, Saturday. Forty-seven guests, all under the age of nine." Bill stirred his coffee. "That's not a heist, that's a war crime." "It's redistribution. Do you know what these children get? Ponies. Actual ponies." "I got a sock puppet and pneumonia." "Exactly." She tapped the paper. "The presents pile up on the sunroom table. Unguarded, unsorted, unloved." "There'll be parents." "Parents don't watch presents. Parents watch children. It's an entirely different sightline." Molly slid over a hand-drawn diagram. "You go in as the balloon animal guy." Bill studied it. "I don't do balloon animals." "You do a giraffe." "I do a snake that looks like a giraffe with tragic secrets." "Children can't tell the difference. Meanwhile I'm the aunt nobody recognizes, loading the loot into the stroller." "Whose stroller?" "Ours. We rent a stroller." Bill leaned back, hands behind his head, weighing the arithmetic of it all. "Fine. But if a kid cries, I'm out." "They always cry." "Then I'm out immediately," he said, and reached for the diagram anyway, because the sunroom had two exits and only one of them was on Molly's map.