"We were family now" sounds like a retrospective vow. It is the language of someone who has stopped questioning and started remembering.
In the context of Rachael Cavalli’s imagined life, this phrase marks the exact moment when chosen family ceases to feel fragile. It is no longer "we are trying to be family" or "we hope to become family." It is were —already done, already true, already etched into the past so that the present can rest in it. The fragment "apovstory" is likely a compressed or mistyped version of "a POV story" (a point-of-view story) or possibly "apostrophic story" (a story addressed to an absent person). Given the surrounding words, I interpret it as: rachael cavalli were family now apovstory work
Instead, the sofa is stained with hot chocolate. The hot chocolate was made by a man who wasn’t her brother last Christmas but is now. The stain was scrubbed by a woman who wasn’t her mother but who yells "Dinner!" exactly like one. "We were family now" sounds like a retrospective vow