Part 1
Springfield, Missouri, does a certain kind of June better than anywhere I know. The lawns are clipped straight as seams, magnolia blossoms push heat into the air, and every porch has a flag that moves just enough to prove there’s a breeze. My graduation party looked like it belonged on a postcard—plastic tables with gingham covers, sheet cake with blue buttercream roses, a cooler full of sodas sweating under the carport, neighbors drifting in on the smell of brisket.

Someone’s playlist touched every era: Motown, 90s country, an upbeat track that made the toddlers hop in place. I stood by the folding table in my white sundress—the one I’d altered from a thrift-store find, bringing the waist in, lifting the hem, adding a line of covered buttons down the back because details matter—and tried to feel like someone whose future had just opened. Clara Kelly, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion Design.

A degree I’d bought with part-time jobs, Pell Grants, and nights at a sewing machine that hummed like a faithful engine. Mom and Dad moved toward me through the crowd like they were a single thought split into two people. Mom held an envelope the way you’d hold an apology you weren’t sure you owed.

Dad had that cautious smile he used whenever life cost money. “This is from Grandma,” Mom said, her voice neat and flat, like a pressed napkin. I slid a finger under the flap and found two crisp bills.

Two hundred dollars. New enough to clack. “That’s so thoughtful,” I said because we’re a family that says things like that, even when they pinch.

Mom’s smile didn’t move. Dad patted my shoulder like he’d checked off a task. Around us, the party kept being a party.

Riley’s laugh rose up from the patio—the bright, performative laugh of a person used to sunlight finding her first. My sister could take a mediocre story and make it sound like a standing ovation. She wore a coral dress that matched the lacquer on her nails, and our parents’ eyes kept straying to her like magnets remember which way north is.

“Let me cut the cake,” I offered, because reflex lives in muscle memory. When you grow up as the helper, your hands know how to move before your heart decides whether it wants to. I took the knife.

I posed for photos. I hugged friends from the fabric shop and from church and from the apartment complex where our mailbox keys always stuck. I said thank you for candles, for a monogrammed planner, for a gas card that would get me as far as Lebanon if I didn’t use the AC.