Chapter 22: The Birthday

By the second Saturday in March I was thirty-four weeks along, and Milo was four.

The snow had gone from Eleanor's garden.

Forty people stood on her lawn in spring coats, with paper plates and plastic cups of lemonade.

Nine of them were the neighbors from our street, who had said yes because her note told them to.

My sister was there in her good dress, with her husband behind her in a tie he hated.

Calvin stood by the hedge, alone, and nodded when I looked at him.

Milo wore a paper crown and a blue sweater and ran across the grass with Biscuit under his arm.

"I'm four," he told everyone. "I have a rabbit."

Timothy stood next to me with one hand on my back.

A leather bag hung from his other shoulder.

Eleanor moved among the guests in a pale suit and her pearls, touching elbows.

She did not look at us once.

At three she stepped up to the long table where the cake stood.

It had four candles lit and a sugar rabbit on top.

"Friends," she said, and the lawn quieted. "Thank you for coming to celebrate my grandson."

Timothy took his hand from my back.

He walked across the grass to the table and set the leather bag on it.

"Timothy," his mother said, very softly. "Not today."

He put his left hand on the table, the one with the scar.

She laid her gloved hand on top of it and held it down.

It looked like a grandmother's gesture. Only the people near them saw how hard she held.

"Not today," she said again.

"Today he's four," Timothy said. "I've missed three of these."

He lifted her hand from his, gently, and set it on the cloth.

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