Chapter 1 - SIXTY-FIVE CANDLES
My daughter-in-law smiled when my birthday cake hit the ground.
Ten seconds later, her Gucci bag was burning.
For once, my son had something to say.
“Mom, what are you doing!”
Funny how he found his voice for leather.
A moment earlier, Sloan had stood beside my lemon cake, looking straight at me as she moved her elbow backward.
The cake stand tipped.
Frosting struck the patio stones.
Sixty-five candles scattered beneath the table.
“Oops,” she whispered.
Harrison looked down.
My sister Ruth stopped halfway out of her chair.
Six neighbors stood around a birthday table suddenly too quiet for the paper streamers fluttering above it.
I had baked that cake myself.
Sloan said ordering one was wasteful.
Then she arrived downstairs wearing shoes that cost more than my monthly grocery bill.
Something hot and ugly rose through my chest.
I walked to the chair beside the fire pit, lifted her handbag by its narrow strap, and dropped it into the embers.
The leather curled.
Harrison lunged past me.
I looked at him.
“Oops.”
Sloan screamed.
Ruth grabbed the fire tongs before Harrison could reach into the flames.
One neighbor brought water.
The bag came out blackened and dripping, a ruined thing on the stones beside my ruined cake.
Nobody sang.
A year earlier, my son and his wife had arrived with four suitcases and a promise.
“Just until we catch up, Mom.”
Temporary became Sloan’s cosmetics across my bathroom counter.
Temporary became her blender waking me at six, her friends drinking my wine, her instructions about which towels guests could use.
My towels.
My guests.
My house.
That night, after everyone left, I scraped frosting into a trash bag.
Ruth knelt beside me.
“You should have let me take you out,” she said.
“I wanted my son to celebrate with me.”
She picked up a bent candle.
Neither of us knew what to do with that sentence.
Through the open kitchen window, Harrison’s voice reached us.
“Why would you do that in front of everybody?”
I stopped scraping.
For one hopeful second, I thought he meant the cake.
Sloan answered sharply.
“Because she was about to ask questions.”
A chair scraped inside.
Harrison shut the window.
Ruth looked at me.
“What questions?”
May you like
I held the trash bag open, staring at the dark glass.
I had no idea.
