Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPQVPRZK0DJ3TT6VMDXBYC

Molly spread the blueprint across the hood of the van, smoothing it flat with her palm. It was not, strictly speaking, a blueprint. It was a napkin from Chuck E. Cheese with a jam stain in the corner where the ball pit should have been. "Fourteen presents," she said. "Minimum." Bill was eating a chicken nugget he had found somewhere. He did not offer an explanation for the nugget and Molly did not ask for one, because they had been partners for eleven years and there were things you learned to let go. The house sat squat and pink at the end of the cul-de-sac, strangled in streamers. A bouncy castle shuddered in the side yard like a lung. Somewhere inside, thirty children screamed in a pitch that made the van's windows tremble, and a woman's voice rose above them, promising cake in a tone that suggested she had already given up on the concept of cake, of birthdays, of joy itself. "Clown suit's in the back," Bill said. Molly closed her eyes. She thought about the choices that had brought her here, one by one, each seeming reasonable at the time. Then she reached for the wig.