Ava stood on the upper wooden deck above the patio.

She was wearing her new white leather sneakers, the hundred-and-forty-dollar pair Daniel had paid for from our joint account.

She leaned against the wooden railing and stared down at the buffet table.

“I can’t eat anything down there,” Ava said to a girl from her high school track team.

Her voice carried easily over the music playing from a portable speaker on the deck table.

Several people on the lawn stopped talking.