A note before we go to press.
Two thousand twenty-six was, by any honest measure, the year of the long quiet. The Reyes household weathered three remodels, one promotion, one half-marathon in costume, the slow conversion of the spare room into something resembling a study, and the late and inexplicable adoption of one cat. The cat, named Mochi, is fine. The Reyeses, in case anyone is asking, are also fine.
This edition was compiled — kitchen table, candles low, the kettle on a slow boil for company — by the friends and family who, between them, held the year in their hands. We have not edited heavily. We have, where necessary, fact-checked. The dog story is, as far as we can confirm, accurate. The two-in-the-morning conversations on the stoop are, where they appear, true. The casserole in the fridge is, at the time of going to press, still in the fridge.
We send this issue out at midnight, with the gentle, slightly silly seriousness that the end of a year asks of us. We file it for Jordan and Sam, who have made the room warm enough that the rest of us keep coming back to file in it. Until next year — read kindly, sleep late, and keep one eye on the cat.
— The Editors
