My mother stood before the judge with both hands pressed against the table.

Summer changed our routine.

School nights no longer mattered, so Mom and Dad made a schedule with longer stretches at each house. They showed it to me before they agreed to it.

“Is there anything important we missed?” Mom asked.

“My birthday,” I said.

They had both circled it.

“We know,” Dad said. “We wanted to ask how you’d like to spend it.”

I looked at them. They were sitting at Dad’s kitchen table without lawyers, folders, or worried faces.

“Can we have one party?”

“Yes,” Mom said.

Dad nodded. “Aunt Renee offered her backyard.”

“I want Grandma there too. And Maya.”

“We’ll invite them,” Mom said.

Planning the party was fun until I heard Aunt Renee and Grandma discussing cake. Grandma wanted the one she had always made for me. Aunt Renee had already ordered a chocolate one from a bakery.

They both looked at me.

I felt the old fear rise. If I chose one cake, would I hurt the other person?

Mom noticed.

“We can have both,” she said.

Aunt Renee laughed. “That seems like an excellent plan.”

Grandma said she would bring extra plates.

I loved them for making it easy.

A few weeks before my birthday, Mom asked whether I wanted to stay an extra night after we visited a museum. She asked Dad first, while I was there. He checked his schedule and agreed.

I slept in my old room. In the morning, Mom marked my height inside the closet door.

“You grew almost an inch,” she said.

I stood back to look. The newest line was beside all the others, just as I had wanted.

Mom put down the pencil.

“I worried you wouldn’t want this anymore,” she told me.

“I do.”

“I’m glad you told me.”

I helped her make breakfast. We danced a little while the toast cooked. I remembered how it had felt before every conversation seemed to have a hidden question.

Mom turned down the music.

“I have something to ask, and you can say no,” she said.

I looked at her carefully.

“Would you like us to have a regular Wednesday dinner during summer? Your dad and I can work out the times.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’d like that.”

She smiled without crying. I liked that too.

At Dad’s, I spent long afternoons reading while he worked at the hospital. Aunt Renee took me to a community art class. I made a small ceramic house, then painted its roof two different colors.

The teacher asked why.

“I stay in two houses,” I said. “This one has both roofs.”

She put it in the class display.

Dad took a photograph and sent it to Mom. She asked if she could come see the display. I told her yes.

On my birthday, the sky was clear. Maya arrived with a stack of handmade coupons for things like “one homework complaint without advice” and “one emergency walk around the block.”

Grandma brought her cake. Aunt Renee brought the bakery cake. My cousins argued about which one to eat first until Dad cut both.

Mom and Dad stood together while I made a wish. I kept it to myself, but it wasn’t the same wish I had made during the first hearing. Back then, I wished nobody would be sad.

Now I wished for more days that felt like this one.

After everyone ate, Grandma asked if she could speak with me alone on the porch. I glanced at Mom. She noticed, but she did not interrupt.

“I wanted to give you this,” Grandma said.

She handed me a little gardening notebook. Inside were drawings of the tomato plants, the dates we had watered them, and blank pages for the rest of summer.

“I didn’t want to talk to you about the adults,” she said. “I wanted us to have something that belongs to us.”

I hugged her.

“We can draw the first red tomato tomorrow.”

“I’d like that.”

Back inside, Dad was helping Maya’s little brother find his lost shoe. Mom was clearing plates with Priya. I watched them move through the room, each doing something useful, each letting me enjoy my party.

Later that evening, after Maya left, Mom and Dad sat on opposite ends of the porch while I opened my last present. It was a telescope they had bought together.

“We thought you could use it from either house,” Dad said.

“Who keeps it first?” I asked.

“You do,” Mom answered.

I laughed. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“We know,” Dad said. “You can bring it where you want.”

I set it up with their help. Through the lens, the moon looked close enough to touch. I made each of them look.

Mom bent to the eyepiece. Dad held the stand steady. For once, the three of us were working on the same thing without anyone feeling left out.