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“I love you, I worship the very ground you walk on, but you've lost your fucking mind,” Will told his wife, who, in turn, completely ignored him.
“I think we should go with this one, right? I mean, it fits in with our Alice in Wonderland theme, don't you think?” Mac slid a picture of a cake in front of Will who rolled his eyes.
"I thought the theme was that she was turning one,” Will argued. “Isn't that enough of a theme?”
“Will,” Mac was using the tone she reserved strictly for those times when she thought he was being a total moron. “The party has to have a theme, and we decided that the theme would be Alice in Wonderland.”
“You decided,” Will shot back. “I've been doing my damn best to just stay out of your way.” “
"And you've been performing your role admirably,” Mac replied, but her face softened into a smile and he was rewarded with a kiss for his efforts. “Now, we need to talk about favors.” Will sighed.
“Whatever you want, yes,” he answered automatically. “I suppose I should be thankful it didn't take seven weeks to pick an invitation this time.”
“See?” Mac said distractedly, as she scrolled through the internet, her glasses sliding down her nose. Will leaned forward and poured himself another glass of wine from the bottle that they had opened as soon as they had put Charlotte to bed. Mac's glass sat mostly untouched, her focus laser-like on the party planning. “Silver lining, Billy. It could always be worse.”
“She's not going to remember any of this,” he pointed out.
"You've used that argument before,” Mac glanced up at him, a pout forming. God help him, he was helpless when she busted out that pout (and it seemed Charlotte had inherited her mother's pout, and if that was the case, he was toast. They argued a lot about which one of them Charlotte resembled more. After one particularly horrible day, one that had included too much time spent with Pruitt and had set her completely on edge, Mac had taken a look at the baby and burst into tears.
“What? What's wrong?” Will had been panicked, glancing between his wife and daughter, unable to figure out what could have caused such a reaction.
“She has my mouth, I think,” Mac wailed. “I wanted her to have your smile.”)
“I know I have,” Will said. “Because it's a solid argument. Why are we worrying about this party?”
“Because it's a celebration of Charlotte, and the fact that we've kept her alive for a whole year,” Mac explained. “She'll only turn one once.” Will glanced over at pile of party detritus that was already crowding the coffee table, and was surely going to grow.
"Thank God for that,” he muttered. Once again Mac ignored him, and he knew this time he had lost her to the world of Pinterest and the black hole of the internet.
Charlotte's party was in exactly two weeks and three days.
It was going to be a long two weeks.
“Do you think it's over the top for her to have a crown?” Mac asked coming into his office a few days later.
“I think everything about this party is over the top,” Will answered succinctly. MacKenzie huffed, throwing herself down into the chair across from him.
He really should have seen this coming. This was a woman who had poured an inordinate amount of time into planning the wedding that never happened. No one threw a party like a McHale. Mac had inherited more than just her backbone and spunk from her mother, and over the past few weeks, she had spent a large chunk of time Skyping with her mother and sisters, agonizing over linen choices for a child's birthday party (“She's turning one,” Will kept repeating until he was shut out of the conversations).
"You are no help,” Mac waved a finger at him. “It's like you don't care!”
“I don't,” he shrugged.
“I'll go ask Sloan,” she sighed, standing and glaring at him. “Since you don't care about your only child's birthday.”
“That's not what I said,” he started to argue, but Mac was already out the door.
“This is a disaster!” Mac exclaimed, and Will tugged her into his arms. “All my careful planning!”
"It's going to be okay, hon,” he tried to be as gentle as possible. He knew his wife pretty damn well, and he knew that this party was about more than just Charlotte's first birthday.
Mac loved her new job, loved what she was doing, was good at it, but there were days when she felt the heavy burden of working mother guilt, and she worried that she wasn't a good mother, panicked that she should quit her job and stay home with Charlie. On those days he held her in his arms while she cried, running a soothing hand down her back and promising her that she was a good mother, that she loved Charlotte, that Charlie knew that, and reminded her that she would absolutely hate being at home, and that she wouldn't be doing anyone, least of all their daughter, any favors if she quit doing the thing that she loved.
“All my hard work,” Mac mourned.
“You couldn't predict the weather,” Will said. He had understood how important this party was to Mac (even more so considering no one was able to bear witness to the time-not to mention money- that was put into their wedding. When he tried to apologize to her about that, she would wave him away and wouldn't hear it.
"I've never been fucking prouder of you, Will McAvoy. Don't you dare apologize." But in the long list of things that weighed heavily on Will, his time spent in prison- having to leave Mac on their wedding night, not being there when Charlie died- was pretty close to the top). Will did feel badly that a massive snowstorm had shut down all the airports along the East coast, meaning that neither his or Mac's family could make it in. A couple of feet of snow had been dumped into New York City pretty much overnight, and Mac had been forced to concede that the Party Gods were against her.
"All that food," Mac muttered into Will's sweater. "All that cake. Can we just take a moment to mourn all that beautiful cake?" The cake, of course, was still sitting in the ungodly expensive bakery that Mac had ordered it from. The lack of cake was the one thing that Will was truly upset about.
Their moment of silence for the cake was interrupted by the baby monitor, and Mac sighed and pulled away from him to make her way to Charlotte's nursery. Will followed a step behind and got to the room just as Mac was picking Charlie up from the crib, brushing a kiss to her forehead.
"Happy birthday, sweetheart," Mac murmured. "We love you so much, and I'm so sorry that today was ruined." Will pulled both his girls into his arms and tucked a kiss into Charlie's soft hair.
"I think this is a sign from the universe that we aren't supposed to throw big parties," Will said gently, and Mac let out a laugh.
"You might be right. We're zero for two for big celebrations," she tipped her head back to rest against his shoulder. Will didn't want to tell her that he wasn't very sorry that they were going to spend Charlotte's birthday just the three of them. His best days were when it was his little family, hidden away from the rest of the world. He figured that opinion was best kept to himself, so he just kissed Mac's temple instead.
"Silver lining?" Will offered after a moment.
"What's that?" Mac asked.
"She's not going to remember it anyway."