Everybody We Love
I'm Having A Party And You're Not Invited Prequel:
Everybody We Love
By Ekona Del Rey Monroe
The house on Sycamore Lane had a heartbeat.
Not the groaning of old timbers or the rattle of pipes, but something quieter, deeper.
It had learned the rhythm of their voices, the shape of their laughter, the particular silence that fell after prayers.
After enough ordinary mornings, enough spilled milk and forgiveness, it had stopped being merely wood and plaster.
The house had learned every name by heart. Soon, Margaret hoped, it would know five.
Margaret believed love was mostly made of small, stubborn choices.
She was thirty-one, carrying her third child like a lantern she feared might flicker out.
Some mornings she woke before dawn, hands cupped around the swell of her belly, whispering promises into the dark.
โYouโll be safe here,โ she told the baby. โWeโll make room.
We always do.
โShe was not perfect. She cried in the pantry when the laundry rose like a tide and the girlsโ bickering scraped her last nerve raw.
She snapped at Daniel when he tracked sawdust across clean floors.
Once, she locked herself in the bathroom and let the water run so no one would hear her sob, terrified she was already failing a child she had not yet met.
Yet love always spoke louder than her fears.
When Sally brought home a dead sparrow and asked for a proper funeral, Margaret knelt in the garden in her good dress and helped dig the grave.
When Emily refused vegetables for the fourth night, Margaret turned supper into a game each bite earned a ridiculous face that left the whole table shaking with laughter.
She loved Daniel the way old houses love their foundations: quietly, completely, even when small cracks appeared.
She noticed how his smiles sometimes arrived a half-beat late.
She noticed the way he sometimes stared out the window at nothing.
She told herself it was only the coming winter, the new baby, the ordinary weight of building a life together.
Sally was seven, all questions and quiet galaxies.
Her hair shone like autumn wheat, and her eyes carried the solemn weight of a child who already sensed the world was vast and breakable.
โMama,โ she asked one night while Margaret brushed her hair,
โwhen the baby is inside you, does it get lonely in the dark?โ
Margaretโs hand stilled.
โNo, sweetheart.
I talk to it every day.
You and Emily sing to it.
It knows your voices.
โSally nodded, satisfied. โGood.
Nobody should be lonely.โ
She kept a little notebook beneath her pillow, sewn by her mother from leftover cloth.
Inside were poems that would shatter anyone who understood how fragile time truly is:
Our house is full of music
Even when we sleep
Daddy fixes things
Mommy keeps us deep
She adored her father.
When Daniel came home, Sally launched herself at him like a small missile of joy.
He would catch her, swing her high, and for those few seconds the lines on his forehead smoothed away.
On her seventh birthday, cake crumbs on her chin, she looked up at him and asked,
โPromise weโll all live in this house forever?โ
Daniel kissed the top of her head.
โForever is a long time, Sal.โ
โBut we can try, right?โ
He smiled the way people smile when they are already leaving. โYeah. We can try.
โEmily, five, was sunlight poured into human shape.
She spoke to flowers and believed they waved back. Her rag doll simply
โDollyโ.went everywhere, one arm already frayed from constant love.
She laughed at everything: rain on the roof, her fatherโs whiskers, the way her motherโs belly moved when the baby stretched inside.
One golden afternoon she stood on the porch watching leaves fall and cried out,
โLook, Mama! The trees are giving us confetti!โ
Margaret watched from the window, hand resting on her unborn child, tears pricking her eyes for reasons she could not name.
Joy, perhaps. Or the quiet terror that anything this pure could not last.
Emily feared only the dark.
Every night she needed the hallway light and her sisterโs hand.
Sally gave it without complaint.
โYou can sleep with us when the baby comes,โ
Emily told Dolly seriously.
โEven if thereโs not enough room. Weโll make room. Mama says we always do.
Daniel was a good father.
That was the cruelest truth.
He repaired the porch step again and again because Emily insisted it liked to talk when she jumped on it.
He read bedtime stories using every voice.
He let Sally paint his nails bright red one rainy Saturday and wore the color to work beneath his gloves.
When he felt the baby kick, he laughed with open wonder, pressing his calloused hand to Margaretโs belly as though touching something holy.
Yet the withdrawals were there, if anyone had known where to look. He sat longer in the truck before coming inside.
His laughter arrived a half-beat behind the rest.
Some nights he stared at his family as if memorizing them, and the look in his eyes was not peace, but a man already saying goodbye in the only language he knew.
No one saw danger.
They saw a tired man carrying stones.
They danced in the kitchen while the record skipped the same note every few bars.
Nobody minded. Supper went cold.
Margaret laughed until she cried because this, this skipping record, little feet on worn floorboards, a husband spinning her gently was happiness, even if it was ordinary.
Not every evening was peaceful.
Money grew tight.
Words sometimes sharpened.
But every argument ended the same way: someone reached first, someone apologized, someone remembered that love mattered more than pride.
The girls never understood the fights.
They only remembered waking to pancakes the next morning.
Children mistake forgiveness for routine.
Adults know it is a miracle.
On the night of November 26, 1958, the house smelled of cinnamon and woodsmoke.
Margaret made pancakes for supper because the girls begged and she was too tired to refuse.
Syrup stuck to small fingers and cheeks. Daniel wiped Emilyโs face while she giggled and smeared more on purpose.
Later, while Margaret folded laundry in warm lamplight, the girls whispered upstairs.
โMama says when the baby comes weโre having the biggest party ever,โ
Sally said.
โWith cake?โ Emily asked sleepily.
โLots of cake. And music. And everybody.โ
โEverybody?โ
โEverybody we love.
โMargaret paused at the bottom of the stairs, heart so full it ached.
She went up and kissed them goodnight, lingering longer than usual.
She breathed them in shampoo, innocence, tomorrow.
Downstairs, Daniel sat at the kitchen table, turning the mother-of-pearl pocketknife over and over in his hands.
A fresh pot of coffee waited beneath a dish towel for morning.
She kissed him softly.
โYou okay?โ
He looked at her his lovely wife, tired and radiant, carrying their child and something flickered behind his eyes like a candle in the wind.
โI love you, Margaret.
โShe smiled. โI know. We all do.
โUpstairs, Sally whispered into the darkness one last time.
โWhen the baby gets here, weโre going to have the biggest party ever.
โEmily giggled beneath the blankets.
โEverybodyโs invited.โ
Margaret, listening from the doorway, felt tears she could not explain.
โEverybody?โ she asked softly.
Sally nodded without opening her eyes.
โEverybody we love.โ
The house listened to every heartbeat.
It memorized every laugh, every prayer, every small act of forgiveness.
It believed, as they did, that tomorrow would come just as faithfully as it always had.
The house was full of music.
It had learned every name.
It believed there would always be another morning.
Nothing bad had happened yet.
The End
