Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPYCP8GPQGBVFCNF3WXGFR

The blueprints spread across the kitchen table were, in fact, a paper placemat from Chuckles Pizza Palace, but Molly had annotated it heavily in red pen. Bill leaned over her shoulder, chewing a pencil he'd found somewhere unsanitary, and studied the layout of the birthday venue with the gravity of a man defusing a bomb. The ball pit was circled three times. Molly tapped the northeast corner, where a crude drawing of a bouncy castle sagged under the weight of her ambitions. Presents accumulated there, she explained, in a glittering pyramid, guarded by nothing more formidable than a folding table and an aunt named Deirdre. "Deirdre drinks," Bill said. "Deirdre is our window." They had planned for the piñata, for the sugar-crazed stampede that would follow, for the eleven-minute blindness of every adult in the room when the candy hit the floor. They had planned for the clown, who was allegedly former military. They had not planned for the possibility that a seven-year-old might notice two grown adults in matching cargo shorts loitering near the goodie bags, and this oversight would eventually cost them everything. Bill folded the placemat with reverence, tucked it into his sock, and reached for the balloons.