Christmas Morning — The Tree and the Things
The Dunphy-Pritchett tree looked like someone had asked for Auntie Pinterest to design it for a magazine. Uncle Mitchell's craft.
Phil danced around the living room with more energy than the toddler tornado, handing out presents like a cheerful auctioneer.
"One for a lovely lady in Red. Sold!" He declared.
Jay grunted from his recliner and pretended not to notice the chaos. DeDe adjusted Hailey's ribbon into something that would have made a pageant judge cry with joy.
Mitchell pretended to read the paper but peeked at every gift like a man who once took bets on Christmas jokes.
Claire opened a maternity spa set and sighed like she'd been given an extra hour of sleep. Phil unwrapped a neon mug that declared him "World's Best Realtor" and put it on like a badge.
Hailey received a dollhouse — two minutes later a wing collapsed because she'd insisted the dolls "needed to sleep under the couch." She smeared frosting like performance art.
And Neil? He unwrapped a neat stack of socks and a small tin of metallic number games. The one with big boxes and zero imagination. He smiled politely, because he was five parts charm and one part old-soul disappointment.
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Neil (inner, dry) Socks. Plastic numbered cubes. Cute. Also: we just configured the Dunchett Empire on a kitchen table a night ago and they thought to get me something that says, "You asked about routers and increased family net worth. Fine. Socks it is."
Phil noticed the tilt in Neil's mouth more than anyone else. After the last week — holiday cheer, a ticker to admire, Jay's router-patched house — guilt arrived in a Phil-shaped wave.
Phil (inner): "Oh. Where is the Monopoly set that we bought for Neil's gift? This is bad. Dunphy Emergency. Claire~ "
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Phil (interview): "My kid's got this serious-sounding head on little shoulders. I thought, 'Kid likes numbers. Kid likes business. Forget LEGO — Monopoly.' Genius, right? But we forget the other cart during checkout. Dunce!"
Claire gave him the look. "Phil, it's all your mistake. See my son only has socks as gifts. What kind of a parents are we? He is at his most impressionable age right now."
Phil, like all great ideas, escalated without permission. Claire like always the arrogant mom blamed it all on Phil. Pritchett genes.
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Christmas Afternoon — The Millennium Save
The living room was a linted battlefield by late afternoon. Phil was sweeping. He froze. "Monopoly," he pronounced, as if he'd solved world hunger.
Claire: "Monopoly? Now?"
Phil: "Yes. Monopoly! Capitalism in a box. He likes business. He'll love the bank, the properties, negotiations — it's educational."
Claire narrowed her eyes. "Yes. But it's too late. Markets will be closed today."
Phil grinned the grin of someone who'd just discovered a cheat code. "I can order it. By phone. Classic. I'll even get him to confirm the address for that authentic 'elective commerce' vibe."
Phil picked up the phone like a ceremonial wand. He dialed. He spoke with the charm of someone used to closing deals on lawns and porches.
Operator: "Thank you for calling —"
Phil, puffing with grin: "Hi, we'd like one Monopoly, please. Address confirmation ready."
Then, with all the solemnity of a pilot handing the controls to a co-pilot, he handed the receiver to Neil.
Neil (voice small, proud): "Dunphy house. Changing Street. Thank you."
Operator (amused): "That's the best confirmation I've had all year."
Neil's chest swelled in a way crayons can't measure. He wrapped his arms around Phil and Claire, and for the first time in a stretch of adults-only chaos they felt it: the unmistakable knot of parental guilt.
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Interview:
Claire: "He hugged us like we'd donated a kidney. We'd been so busy with tantrums and run-of-the-mill disaster, we missed that he was still our son. Not just miniature daylight accountants. Sometimes, he really makes us forget with his eccentric behavior."
Phil: "When your kid hugs you like that; you realize Monopoly is more than a game. It's redemption of guilt."
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Early January — Wrong Turn, Right Timing
Claire decided, sensibly, to hole up at Jay's for the last month. It was calmer; Jay's house had people who could actually tape up various emergency things without collapsing into a motivational seminar.
She swore they wouldn't repeat the mistakes of last time — when Neil & Hailey's arrival had them running like a badly plotted sitcom.
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Flashback (Dec 1993):
On the drive to the hospital, with contractions on Claire's face and Phil insisting he'd "got this," they took a wrong turn because Phil trusted his memory of a "shortcut".
Claire (yelling): "This is not a Google Maps ad, Phil! Drive!" (Idk how people went around in 90s America)
Phil (nervous): "It's okay. I know a guy. He sells houses on this street."
Jay, behind them on the phone with his assistant: "Dunphy! Turn right! Or I'm taking the wheel!"
At one hub stop, Phil nearly tried to give the baby a pep talk. Claire, unamused, threatened to name the baby after his worst client. There was a blessed and panicked moment when the contractions accelerated and it was very nearly an in-car episode of "Will They Make It?"
They made it to the hospital with seconds to spare. The parking attendant deserves a medal. Phil has a story he tells at barbecues, where he swears the baby almost beat him to a punchline.
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Delivery — Fresh, Not Recycled
The delivery ward had its own climate: fluorescent, earnest, and bearing a distinct melody of squeaky sneakers. DeDe popped in with a casserole and a factory of opinions.
DeDe: "In my day, a little Scotch and a pep talk and everyone calmed!"
Claire (from the bed): "Mother. Not the time."
Phil took up the role he was good at: over-encouragement. He started cadence chants, tried a verse of Eye of the Tiger and then switched to something more soothing that sounded suspiciously like a real estate jingle.
Doctor (grim but kind): "Just breathe, Claire. Push when you feel it."
Claire delivered like a champion. Phil attempted the ceremonial lift the way men attempt ceremonial competence: all heart, little skill. He raised the baby an inch and started humming the Circle of Life before a nurse gently, firmly repossessed the newborn.
Doctor (looking at the baby): "It's a girl."
Claire, exhausted and ferociously polite, said, "Her name is Alex."
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The Room Reacts
Everyone crowded in. Jay, in a way reserved only for his daughter's children, tried not to cry. Mitchell wiped his eyes and then archived it as "personal weakness," which suited him.
Hailey, fearless and direct, blinked at the sleeping pink bundle and declared, flatly, "Wow. She's so ugly."
Claire (turning slowly toward DeDe): "You taught her to be a tiny savage. I'm blaming you at the next brunch."
DeDe, affronted and proud: "Honesty is a virtue."
Mitchell: "I mean, the kid's already a social critic. That's… alarming."
Phil, ever the theatrical father, tried again for Lion King. "Look! She's our—"
Claire lobbed a pillow. Nurse confiscated the Disney moment. Jay just smiled like a tough man who had never enjoyed soft smiles this much.
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Night — Neil and the Promise
That night, after the lights dimmed and Alex slept in a genteel bassinet in the living room, Neil sat beside her and felt something big and liquid inside his small chest: protectiveness.
(Neil — inner): ROB promised I wouldn't get a cruel rebirth trick. He told me, "No Ariel Winter sister." ROB kept it quiet and cosmic. If Alex grows up looking like anyone from my old life, ROB owes me coffee and an apology. But none of that matters right now. This cute ball of cotton is my sister.
She was so small and air-sounding and perfect. He felt a fizzing, warrior-hot kind of loyalty bloom in him — childish and serious. He looked at Jay across the room and felt the odd pride of a general watching his troop take formation.
(Neil — quiet): "I've got you."
His eyes flashed — not weird, just very toddler dramatic. Fire-in-the-eyes anime stare. He imagined putting a shield around Alex and felt absolutely certain that anyone who hurt her would be sorry in ways tax forms can't explain.
Neil: 'I guess. You can be a Ranger Elf of the party. Long vision and Snarky tongue. I wouldn't mind being the dark healer. Hehe'
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One Week Later — The Box at the Door
There are few sounds more promising to a kid than the thump of a parcel on the porch.
Phil—the kid— heard it, sprinted, and returned with a cardboard grin. He had forgotten, then remembered, then made it happen — Monopoly, our little treaty to make me feel seen.
Phil theatrically opened the box as if unveiling a small country. The little tin of Monopoly money spilled like bright confetti. Houses. Hotels. Dice. The little dog and thimble pieces gleamed like tiny artifacts.
Neil in the best possible way: wet-eyed, sudden, a hug that turned Claire and Phil into something like parents who finally understood the scale of what they'd missed from their son.
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Interview:
Claire: "He hugged us like we'd given him a planet. It felt awful and sweet. We'd been so busy with the infant and Hailey's emotional theater we forgot he's still three. I cried. A lot. After"
Phil: "Monopoly is curriculum. It's negotiation, it is property law, it's—also, kids, wait until you see the Bank!"
Mitchell: "For a second, I thought, 'A board game? Really?' Then I remembered trauma is how family's bond. Monopoly is capitalist trauma with dice."
Jay: "Better than Barney."
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Game Night — Monopoly Does What Monopoly Does
They set up the board in the living room like a small economy launching. Phil took the banker role with a reverence usually reserved for altar servers. Claire sighed and accepted that she might be about to be ruined in the property markets.
Phil: "Boardwalk is my destiny, people."
Hailey immediately attempted to eat the thimble. Neil, quiet and small, set a logic map in his head: if I buy this and trade, I can block Phil and secure a small chain. He was at once tender and merciless in strategy.
Mitchell argued Free Parking had to be house rules worthy of constitutional review. Jay muttered about railroads and closets.
Claire checked baby monitors like a general scanning for a siege.
The game dissolved into laughter and competitive crying. Phil mortgaged one property as an "investment strategy" and Claire pretended faint outrage.
Mitchell's momentary moralizing about monopoly theory turned into a lecture on how the game simulates inequality, then into bargaining for a hat.
Neil won, somehow, by a combination of careful trades and Hailey's philanthropy (she donated everything to Free Parking and cried when she realized money isn't food). He grinned like he'd discovered a new switch in the universe.
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The Vow — Anime Eyes, Tiny Fury, And Laughter
Later, he put Alex back in her bassinet, smoothed a tiny hand over her hair, and thought, very seriously: her life is new and fragile.
He imagined a furnace lighting inside him — childish hyperbole, absolutely — and promised her the thing kids promise when they mean it.
(Neil — inner): Ariel Winter or Maisie Williams, or whoever the cosmic casting director throws at her, you are my sister. Hurt her and I will literally summon small fires of justice. (Anime stare activated. Burning fist in the air (imagined)).
He whispered, "I've got you," and the house felt, for a moment, like a fortress built of blankets and sticky Monopoly money.
Then—CRASH—Hailey ran towards the crib with loud noises. I thought she was going to turn it over like a mad gorilla. I stopped her before she could.
Claire—realizing her night was almost ruined by a crying Alex, quickly held Hailey and smacked her butt for not being a responsible elder sister.
Phil—ever so dramatic—quickly thought of bunch of reasons to stop the party member (Hailey) from the Boss's (Claire) bindings.
I couldn't hold my laughter.
Hahaha—Everyone stared back at me. Even little Alex opened her confused eyes at me. I laughed even louder. HAHAHAHA.
It was at this moment I realized.
I was home. My home.
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Extra — The Party Roster (Extended Play)
Neil retraced in his head the way he'd been cataloguing them for months.
Jay — Merchant-General (practical, gruff, will buy you a closet).
Phil — Bard (charisma, terrible metaphors, morale boost).
Claire — Tank/Healer (absorbs trouble, gives tough love).
Mitchell — Sarcastic Strategist (logic, legal defense).
Hailey — Chaos DPS (unpredictable, loud).
Alex — New Recruit (class unknown; Potential Healer or an Elf).
Neil — Reincarnated Analyst (strategy + anime flame).
I smiled. The roster felt right. The party was larger now; the quests would be harder, the loot more emotional, and the jokes more painful. But it will be fun.