Gerald covered his face with one hand.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Below the balcony, cars moved along the street. Somewhere, a dog barked. Life continued, ordinary and miraculous.
Finally, Gerald whispered, “My mother would have put that on a cake.”
“Ruth still might.”
“She’ll make it crooked.”
“Then it’ll be perfect.”
The adoption hearing was scheduled for December seventeenth.
My birthday.
I suspected Ruth had bullied someone at the courthouse. She denied it with the confidence of a guilty woman.
The morning of the hearing, I woke before sunrise.
For years, my birthday had felt like a test I always failed.
My mother had forgotten it twice. Once, when I was nine, she remembered at 8 p.m. and handed me a grocery store cupcake still in the plastic container.
“Don’t be ungrateful,” she said when I cried.
At sixteen, Claire had announced she got the lead in the school musical on my birthday, and my dinner became a celebration for her.
At twenty-three, Richard sent money instead of calling.
But twenty-seven felt different.
I stood in front of the mirror in my apartment wearing a green dress and touched the faint scar on my abdomen.
A line where I had been opened.