My mother took my six-year-old daughter’s birthday cake, placed it before her favorite grandson, and said, “Don’t make a scene. That cake’s wasted on her.” Lily went silent while fourteen people watched. Then my father grabbed my arm, and thirty-four years of family silence finally broke open there in public.

My daughter did not cry when my mother took her birthday cake away. She did not yell, stomp upstairs, or demand that someone give it back. Lily simply went quiet, the particular kind of quiet a child makes when she has just discovered that something unfair is not an accident at all.

My name is Derek. Lily turned six that Saturday, and the fourteen people crowded into our kitchen had no idea they were about to watch a family habit thirty-four years old finally hit a wall. I had spent most of my life learning not to name that habit, but Lily had already found words for it the week before her party.

She was doing homework at our kitchen table when she looked up and said, “Grandma likes Mason more. It’s okay, Daddy. I’m used to it.” She went back to her worksheet after saying it, as casually as if she had told me recess was too short, while I sat there staring at my six-year-old daughter and trying to absorb the phrase I’m used to it.

That sentence followed me into bed for three nights. My wife, Sarah, would fall asleep beside me while I stared at the ceiling and remembered being Lily’s age, then eight, then fourteen, always standing slightly outside whatever circle my mother had made around my older brother Scott. Donna was sixty-one now, still attractive in the polished suburban way she valued, her ash-blond hair always neat and her clothes always coordinated, and she would have sworn sincerely that she loved both sons and both grandchildren equally.

The evidence had always lived in smaller places. Scott received the longer hug, the first question, the carefully chosen gift, the framed photograph. His son Mason inherited the same position without asking for it, while Lily inherited mine. In my mother’s hallway, seven of nine family photographs featured Scott, Michelle, or Mason; only two included my family, and in one of those Lily was half hidden behind somebody’s arm.

Two years earlier, four-year-old Lily had counted those pictures and asked, “Daddy, why isn’t my picture on Grandma’s wall?” I told her Grandma probably had not gotten around to putting one up yet. Nothing changed. That lie sat in my memory beside an older one my father had taught me to tell myself: your mother loves you both the same.

When I was eight, Donna bought Scott a red ten-speed bicycle for his birthday. Three weeks later, she gave me a bicycle helmet, although I did not own a bicycle. I remember staring at the helmet while my father, Richard, pulled me toward the kitchen and whispered, “Be grateful for what you have.” That was how I learned that noticing unfairness could be treated as worse behavior than creating it.

At fourteen, I finally asked Dad why Mom spent an entire Thanksgiving questioning Scott about school, friends, and plans while the only thing she said directly to me was, “Pass the salt.” Dad sighed and gave me an answer that shaped the next twenty years. “I know it isn’t even, Derek, but your mother can’t hear that. If you push her, she’ll pull away from both of you. Is that what you want?”

He had given a fourteen-year-old a choice between silence and abandonment. I chose silence, and I kept choosing it long after I was old enough to understand what he had done. Now Lily was learning the same lesson from the same people, and I could feel something in me becoming harder to bargain with.

On the morning of her party, I was standing on a ladder taping pink and purple streamers across the ceiling when Lily came downstairs in pajamas. She looked up at me and asked, “Daddy, is Grandma going to bring Mason a bigger present than mine again?” The word again landed harder than the question.

I climbed down and knelt in front of her. “This is your birthday. Today is about you.” Lily studied my face before saying, “Okay,” but she did not sound convinced. She sounded exactly like I used to sound when Dad assured me Mom had not meant anything by whatever she had just done.

By noon, the house looked like Lily. A hand-painted banner hung crookedly across the living room because her L’s still leaned sideways. Mermaid plates covered the table, and in the kitchen waited the cake she had designed with me two weeks earlier: vanilla inside, strawberry frosting outside, pink flowers around the edges, her name across the top, and a gold crown in the center because, according to Lily, “regular queens are better than princesses.”

Fourteen people were coming. My parents, Scott and Michelle, eight-year-old Mason, three of Lily’s school friends and their parents, our neighbors Janet and Paul, and Sarah’s sister Amy. Donna arrived fifteen minutes early carrying two gift bags, one large bag wrapped with silver ribbon and a handwritten card, and one small store bag with tissue paper poking from the top.

Lily stood in the hallway in a lavender birthday dress. Mom walked past her, found Mason, and brightened. “Mason, sweetheart, I brought you something special.” His birthday was six months away. Only after handing him the large package did she turn back toward Lily and offer the smaller bag. “Here you go, sweetie. Just a little something.”

Lily thanked her and placed the bag on a side table without opening it. She did not ask why Mason received the bigger present at her birthday party because, apparently, six years had already been enough time to learn the answer. Sarah caught my eye from the kitchen, and neither of us needed to speak.

Mom entered the kitchen, inspected Lily’s cake, and frowned. “That looks a little small for this many people.” I told her it was plenty, but she kept examining it. “Mason has been looking forward to this all week. I just want to make sure everyone gets enough.”

“It’s Lily’s birthday, Mom.”

“You know what I mean.”

I did.

For the next two hours, Donna orbited Mason. She asked about soccer, his teacher, his travel team, and a science project while Lily stood six feet away showing her friends the glitter banner she had spent three hours making. Mom took four pictures of Mason and none of Lily. She brought Mason a juice box without being asked and never checked whether the birthday girl had one.

Dad arrived and immediately found Mom, the way he had done throughout their marriage. When Lily proudly offered him strawberries she had arranged in a circle, he took one without really looking at the plate and said, “That’s nice, Lily,” while watching Donna talk to Mason. Lily remained beside him for three seconds, waiting, then quietly carried the plate away.

Sarah stepped close to me. “How long are we going to keep doing this?”

“I don’t know.”

But I did know. I just had not admitted it yet.

At 2:10, I carried the cake to the table. Lily bounced beside me while I lit six candles, one by one, and for three perfect seconds the room belonged entirely to her. The flames reflected in her eyes, her crooked birthday banner hung behind her, and Sarah stood beside me with her phone ready to record.

Someone drew breath to begin singing.

Then my mother moved.

Donna stepped through the gathered adults, reached both hands toward the cake, and lifted it from directly in front of Lily. She carried it four steps across the kitchen and set it in front of Mason, who had been eating a cookie and now looked more confused than pleased.

Lily’s face changed as the cake left the table. Her shoulders dropped barely half an inch, and the light behind her expression seemed to disappear.

Mom raised her phone toward Mason and said, “Don’t make a scene. That cake’s wasted on her.”

The room went silent.

I stared at my mother, then at my daughter. Lily was not crying. That frightened me more than tears would have.

My father’s hand closed around my arm.

“Not here, son.”

I looked down at his fingers. In thirty-four years, that hand had restrained me countless times, but I could not remember it ever landing on Donna’s arm after she hurt me.

I gently removed it.

Then I looked directly at my mother.

“Mom, look at Lily.”

Donna blinked. “What?”

“Look at your granddaughter. The one whose birthday cake you just took away.”

“I was including Mason. Don’t be dramatic.”

“You called her cake wasted on her.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Everyone heard exactly how you meant it.”

Her eyes moved toward Dad, asking silently for the rescue he had provided her my entire life. He started forward, then noticed all fourteen people watching him and stopped.

I kept my voice level.

“Last week Lily told me, ‘Grandma likes Mason more. It’s okay, Daddy. I’m used to it.’ She is six years old, Mom, and she is already used to being ranked last by you.”

Donna’s face drained of color.

I looked at Lily, standing beside an empty space where her cake had been, and finally said the words nobody had ever said for me.

“That ends today.”

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Chapter 2: Fourteen witnesses finally saw the favoritism my family always denied

Donna’s eyes filled immediately. “I cannot believe you would speak to your mother this way in front of everyone,” she said, turning the confrontation itself into the offense. I recognized the maneuver because I had watched it work for most of my life: skip what happened, focus on how cruel the injured person is for mentioning it.

Scott stepped from the doorway holding a beer. “Bro, you’re ruining Lily’s birthday. This is not the time.” I looked at him and asked when the time would be, because I had been waiting thirty-four years and his answer had always been some version of not now.

“Mom loves all the grandkids,” he insisted.

“Name one of Lily’s birthdays she remembered without being reminded.”

His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Michelle, Scott’s wife, looked from him to Donna. “Your mother just called our niece a waste in her own house. What exactly is Derek supposed to do, pretend he didn’t hear it?”

Scott stared at her as though the furniture had spoken.

Sarah crossed the kitchen without arguing with anyone. She knelt beside Lily and wrapped both arms around her, which made the difference in the room suddenly impossible to ignore. One woman had chosen the child; the other had chosen the hierarchy.

I walked to Mason, who stepped aside immediately. He had never asked for any of this, and I refused to make him responsible for the adults who had built it.

I lifted the cake and carried it back to Lily’s place. Then I replaced the candles Donna had disturbed and lit all six again.

“This is your cake,” I told my daughter. “This is your birthday. Blow them out whenever you’re ready.”

Lily looked at me, then Sarah, then the cake. She took one breath and blew.

Enough people sang to make it a birthday song. Janet sang, Michelle sang, Sarah sang, Amy sang, and Lily’s friends sang loudly because children are often better at understanding what a moment needs than adults.

Donna did not sing.

Dad did not sing.

Scott did not sing.

Twelve minutes later, my mother left without saying goodbye to Lily. Dad followed her to the door, turned back toward me, and said, “I hope you’re happy.”

I looked at my daughter.

She was not happy.

That was the whole point.

Chapter 3: My mother returned demanding sympathy instead of facing her cruelty

Mason apologized before his parents left. He was eight years old, standing beside the front door with his jacket half zipped when he looked at Lily and said, “Sorry about your birthday.” Nobody had asked him to say it, and the fact that he understood enough to apologize made the adults’ excuses look even smaller.

After the door closed, the party slowly rebuilt itself from what remained. Janet invented games using napkins and markers, Amy started a ridiculous dance contest in the living room, and Lily’s school friends pulled her into the backyard. By late afternoon she was laughing again, carefully at first and then normally, as if she were testing whether happiness was safe to return to.

Janet found me alone in the kitchen. She held her coffee with both hands and said, “I’ve noticed how your mother treats Mason and Lily at every family gathering I’ve attended.” She reminded me that after Lily’s fifth birthday, Donna had taken Mason to an ice-cream truck without even asking Lily whether she wanted something.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked.

“I told myself it wasn’t my family. Today she used the word wasted about a six-year-old in front of me. That made it my business.”

One of the school moms later told me her five-year-old had asked why the birthday girl’s grandmother took away her cake. “Kids see what adults train themselves not to see,” she said. “Lily will remember what Donna did, but she’ll also remember that her father stopped it.”

That evening, after the last guest left, I found Lily sitting on the couch in her wrinkled birthday dress. She looked up and said, “Daddy, you talked to Grandma like she was wrong.”

“She was wrong, baby.”

Lily thought about that for several seconds. “Nobody ever told her that before.”

I had to leave the room.

Four days later Donna appeared at our front door without calling. Her expression was soft and wounded, the face she wore when she had already decided she was the injured party.

“Can we talk?”

“We can talk here.”

“I’m your mother. You can’t just cut me off.”

“I’m Lily’s father. I can’t let her grow up the way I did.”

Donna frowned. “The way you grew up? Derek, you had everything. Food, a home, two parents who loved you.”

“You bought Scott a bicycle and me a helmet.”

Her face changed.

“I was eight. I remember it because I didn’t own a bike.”

“That was thirty years ago.”

“And last week you took a birthday cake from your granddaughter and said it was wasted on her. Thirty years apart, same pattern.”

“You’re being cruel.”

“No. I’m being clear. You’ve just never heard it from me before.”

Donna tried tears, indignation, and disbelief in quick succession. None worked because I had grown up watching every version.

“When you’re ready to talk about what happened instead of how uncomfortable it felt to be confronted about it, call me.”

She stood there for another moment.

Then she left without saying goodbye.

Again.

Chapter 4: My father admitted he protected peace by sacrificing me instead

Dad called two days later. His voice had lost the authority it usually carried, and for the first time I heard not the family referee I had feared disappointing but an aging man who had spent decades avoiding one exhausting argument.

“I know it wasn’t fair,” he said. “What your mother did to you growing up. I always knew.”

The admission angered me more than denial would have.

“Then why didn’t you stop her?”

He exhaled slowly. “Because stopping it would have meant fighting with her constantly, Derek. Every birthday, every Christmas, every little thing. I was trying to keep the family together.”

“So you gave the problem to me.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“It’s what you did. You were an adult who didn’t have the energy to confront his wife, so you taught a child to absorb her behavior quietly instead.”

Dad went silent.

I remembered being fourteen in our old kitchen while he explained that speaking up might make Mom withdraw from both sons. At the time, I had thought he was protecting our family. Now I understood that he was protecting the arrangement most comfortable for the adults.

“You kept telling me not here, Dad. At birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, everywhere. You never told her not here.”

“I was trying to keep peace.”

“No. You kept silence. Peace and silence are not the same thing.”

He did not answer for a while. I could hear faint television noise behind him and imagined him sitting in the recliner he had owned for years, finally facing a version of himself he had successfully avoided.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“I don’t want a speech. I want you to understand Lily is not going to learn what I learned. She won’t spend her childhood wondering what she did wrong every time Grandma looks past her.”

“So we never see you again?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Your mother thinks you’re punishing her.”

“Boundaries feel like punishment to people who benefited from there being none.”

Dad sighed. “I just want things to go back to normal.”

“This is normal now.”

The sentence surprised both of us.

After we hung up, I expected guilt. Instead, I felt tired and strangely steady.

Sarah found me standing at the kitchen sink. “How did it go?”

“He admitted he knew.”

Her face tightened. “All these years?”

“All of them.”

She put a hand on my arm. It was the same place Dad had grabbed me at the party, but the touch meant the opposite thing. She was not asking me to stop.

She was telling me she was there.

That difference stayed with me.

The next weekend arrived without an invitation to my parents’ house, without Donna’s messages about dinner times, and without Scott calling to ask whether I had “calmed down yet.” For the first time in years, Saturday morning belonged entirely to the three people living under my roof.

I had no idea how much of our family life had been organized around avoiding everyone else’s disappointment until there was nobody left to please.

The quiet felt unfamiliar.

Then it started feeling good.

Chapter 5: Without family gatherings, our weekends slowly became peaceful again together

Our Saturdays turned into pancake mornings, park afternoons, and movie nights where Lily chose the film without an adult overruling her because it was “too childish.” Sunday, the day traditionally claimed by my parents for family dinner, became almost unnervingly open.

The first Sunday, Lily appeared in the hallway around eleven wearing leggings and one of Sarah’s oversized sweatshirts. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere.”

She stared at me. “We’re staying home?”

“Yep.”

Her face brightened as if I had announced a vacation.

That afternoon she constructed a fort from blankets and couch cushions and declared it “a castle for people who like each other.” She said it while arranging stuffed animals along the entrance and did not explain herself. Sarah and I exchanged a look and let the sentence remain exactly where Lily put it.

Amy came over later that week. She sat at our kitchen table and admitted that she and Sarah had discussed Donna’s favoritism for years.

“I never understood why you let it keep happening,” she said.

“Because I was trained not to see it, and when I did see it, I was trained not to say it.”

“Well, you said it now.”

I smiled faintly. “Apparently.”

“For what it’s worth, every person at that party has said some version of the same thing. Janet called it brave. One of the school parents called it necessary. Nobody outside your family thinks protecting Lily was wrong.”

“My family does.”

“Your family benefited from you staying quiet.”

That sentence stayed with me because it explained why the reaction had been so intense. I had not merely criticized Donna. I had stopped performing the role everyone else had arranged around her.

Scott had always been allowed to believe our childhood was basically equal because my silence protected him from evidence otherwise. Dad was allowed to think he kept the family peaceful. Donna was allowed to believe her preferences were too subtle to count as favoritism.

Then one birthday cake made the whole arrangement visible.

Weeks became months. Donna did not apologize. Occasionally she sent messages that began with lines such as I’m sorry you feel this way, which is not an apology so much as an accusation wearing nicer shoes.

I stopped responding.

Dad called periodically and kept testing the edges of the boundary. “Your mother misses Lily,” he would say. I would ask whether Donna understood why she was not seeing Lily. His answer was always complicated enough to mean no.

Scott barely spoke to me.

Michelle did.

One evening she called after Mason was asleep. “I owe you something,” she said.

“You don’t owe me.”

“I do. I saw pieces of it before and let Scott explain them away. He always said your mom connected better with Mason because he was older, or because he was a boy, or because Lily was shy. At the party, there was no explanation left.”

I appreciated that she did not ask me to forgive Donna or restore family dinners.

She simply acknowledged what she had seen.

That was more useful.

As summer ended, Lily seemed lighter in ways I had not expected. She stopped asking whether Grandma would attend things. She stopped comparing gifts. Once, when Sarah suggested inviting friends for dinner, Lily asked only who was coming, not whether Mason would get the “special chair” beside Grandma.

Children should not have to map a room for signs of ranking.

Mine had.

Now she was slowly forgetting how.

Chapter 6: Lily’s school drawing showed exactly who she trusted most now

In September, Lily started first grade. A few weeks later, her teacher asked the children to draw their families, and at our parent conference she slid Lily’s picture across the desk with a thoughtful expression.

There were three people on green grass beneath a large yellow sun. Sarah stood on one side, I stood on the other, and Lily occupied the center. She had drawn herself taller than both of us and placed a crown on her own head, the same ordinary queen’s crown she had insisted belonged on her birthday cake.

Her teacher tapped the page gently. “Does Lily have extended family nearby?”

“Yes.”

“She didn’t include them.”

I looked at the drawing. No grandparents, uncle, aunt, or cousin appeared anywhere.

“Is that a concern?”

The teacher considered her answer. “Not necessarily. Some children draw everyone they’re related to. Other children draw the people they currently experience as their safe family.”

That word stayed with me.

Safe.

Later I asked Lily about the picture while she ate apple slices at the kitchen counter.

“Your teacher showed us your family drawing.”

“Did she like my crown?”

“She did. I noticed Grandma and Grandpa weren’t in it.”

Lily shrugged. “They’re not in my picture right now.”

There was no anger behind the sentence. She was not punishing anyone or trying to make a philosophical point. She was six and describing her emotional geography with crayons.

“Okay,” I said.

She looked suspicious. “That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

Then she returned to her snack.

I carried the drawing home from the conference in a folder and spent too much of the evening looking at it. Lily had put herself in the center, not because we had taught her she deserved to dominate everyone else, but because for the first time she seemed certain she belonged there.

I thought about my childhood photographs. Scott was usually centered. I learned to stand near the edge without being told, positioning myself according to a hierarchy everybody insisted did not exist.

Lily was learning something different.

Sarah found me holding the picture near the refrigerator. “You okay?”

“Look where she put herself.”

She smiled. “That’s my girl.”

“No. Really look.”

Lily’s crayon figure had stretched nearly to the sun. Her purple dress was too wide, her hands had six fingers each, and the crown tilted slightly to one side.

Six months earlier, the same child had said, Grandma likes Mason more. I’m used to it.

Now she had drawn herself taller than everybody.

I taped the picture to the refrigerator.

Dad called that weekend.

“Your mother wants to send Lily something.”

“For what?”

“No reason.”

“That’s fine.”

He hesitated. “She wants to bring it herself.”

“Not yet.”

“How long is this supposed to go on?”

“Until Mom can say what she did without telling me why I shouldn’t have been upset about it.”

Dad became quiet.

Then, unexpectedly, he said, “I understand.”

I waited for the usual qualification.

None came.

“She isn’t there yet,” he admitted.

It was the most honest thing he had said since the party.

“All right.”

“I am sorry, Derek.”

I closed my eyes.

Not everything repaired itself because somebody finally apologized. Thirty-four years still existed.

But for once, Dad had placed responsibility where it belonged.

That was something.

Chapter 7: Breaking one old silence finally changed what Lily would inherit

Four months after the birthday, half my extended family still barely spoke to me. Donna remained convinced I had humiliated her unnecessarily, Scott treated me like I had detonated a perfectly functional family, and some relatives who had not witnessed the party preferred the safer explanation that “both sides got emotional.”

I stopped trying to correct them. People determined to preserve an old family story can turn almost any fact into an inconvenience.

What mattered was happening inside my own house.

One evening I came into the kitchen and found Lily sitting at the table eating the last frozen piece of her birthday cake. Sarah had wrapped several slices after the party, and somehow this one had survived behind a bag of peas for months.

Lily had changed into pajamas after school, but the paper crown from some classroom activity sat crookedly on her head.

“Good cake?” I asked.

She nodded. “Still mine.”

I smiled before I could stop myself. “Still yours.”

She pushed a small bite around with her fork. “Is Grandma still mad?”

“Yes.”

“Because you told her she was wrong?”

“Partly.”

Lily considered that. “Was she wrong?”

“Yes.”

That answer came easily now.

She took another bite. “Then she can be mad.”

Six-year-old logic is occasionally brutal in its efficiency.

I sat across from her.

“Do you miss Grandma?”

“Sometimes.”

“You’re allowed to.”

She looked up. “Do you?”

That question was harder.

“Sometimes I miss the grandma I wish she could be for you.”

Lily nodded as though that made perfect sense.

I realized I had spent decades believing boundaries required hatred. They did not. I could love my mother, remember good days, miss parts of her, and still refuse to place my daughter back into a system that taught her she mattered less.

Mason remained part of Lily’s life through Michelle. Sarah and I made sure the children could see each other without forcing them to carry the conflict between adults. Mason had never asked to be favored, and I was not going to punish an eight-year-old for receiving something he had been handed since birth.

The first time he came over afterward, he brought Lily a pack of glitter markers.

“My mom said I didn’t have to bring anything,” he explained. “I wanted to.”

Lily inspected them. “Purple?”

“Two purples.”

She immediately forgave whatever needed forgiving.

Watching them color at the kitchen table reminded me that the family pattern was not Mason’s inheritance unless we adults made it his. He could grow up knowing that being loved did not require someone else to be diminished.

That possibility mattered.

Dad eventually began visiting alone. The first few times he seemed uncomfortable without Donna beside him, as though he had forgotten how to be a grandfather independently. Lily made him earn his way into conversation naturally.

She showed him schoolwork.

He looked at it.

She showed him a Lego house.

He asked questions.

One afternoon she brought him a plate of apple slices arranged in a circle.

My chest tightened before I understood why.

“Grandpa, look. I made a flower.”

Dad lowered the newspaper he was holding and studied the plate.

“You did. That’s pretty clever. Did you cut these yourself?”

“No. Daddy says knives are a conspiracy against first graders.”

Dad laughed.

Lily beamed.

I stood at the sink pretending to rinse the same glass longer than necessary.

That tiny exchange did not erase the strawberries at her birthday or all the moments Dad had failed to look. It proved only that people who finally understand a pattern can choose differently the next time.

Donna had not reached that point.

Maybe she would someday.

Maybe she would not.

I stopped building our peace around the possibility.

One night, months after the party, I stood in front of the refrigerator looking at Lily’s family drawing. Three figures under a yellow sun, my daughter in the center wearing her crown.

Behind me, Sarah was packing lunches. Lily was singing badly in the bathtub upstairs, changing the words to a song every time she forgot them.

Nothing dramatic was happening.

That was exactly why the moment felt important.

When I was a child, nobody stopped my mother’s ranking system. Dad managed it. Scott benefited from it. I adapted to it. By adulthood, I had become so skilled at swallowing small humiliations that I mistook silence for maturity.

Then I watched the same silence appear on Lily’s face.

That was the one thing I could not inherit quietly and pass forward politely.

People sometimes talk about breaking family patterns as though it requires a giant confrontation, a permanent estrangement, or one perfect speech that changes everyone involved.

Mine began with something simpler.

A cake went to the wrong child.

My daughter went quiet.

And this time, somebody said no.

That was enough to change what happened next.

Lily would still encounter unfair people. She would still be excluded sometimes, overlooked sometimes, and hurt by people who should have known better.

I could not build a childhood where nobody disappointed her.

I could give her one certainty I never had.

When something hurt because it was wrong, she would not be taught that noticing it made her ungrateful.

She would not be handed the responsibility of protecting adults from the consequences of their choices.

She would know that love did not require standing quietly at the edge of somebody else’s picture.

I looked again at the drawing on the refrigerator.

Lily had colored her crown gold.

Regular crown, not princess crown.

Queens are better.

I smiled.

My daughter had already decided where she belonged.

My job was not to convince everyone else to place her there.

My job was to make sure nobody taught her to step aside.

The End

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental! Thank you! 💓