Chapter 24: Twenty-Seven

At five minutes to midnight on the twentieth of October, I was sitting wide awake on a kitchen stool.

I had been told to stay up.

Nobody had said why.

"You look suspicious," Donovan said, from the other side of the island.

"I'm waiting for you to tell me what's going on."

"Nothing's going on."

"Donovan."

"It's a late night. People have them."

He was leaning on the counter in a black sweater with a dish towel over his shoulder.

He looked at the clock on the stove.

I had been in Marblehead for most of a year by then.

My own heart beat in my chest, quick and ordinary, and I had stopped noticing it sometime in the summer.

The kitchen smelled of cinnamon.

On the table by the window sat a cake box that I had not been allowed to open.

At one minute to midnight, he came around the island and stood in front of me.

"Hold still," he said.

"For what?"

"For this."

He took my face in his hands.

"Happy birthday, Deirdre," Donovan said, and kissed me.

It was a long, slow, warm kiss, and I did not want it to end.

When it did, the oven clock turned to 12:00.

"I'm first," he said.

I laughed, and my eyes stung.

"She said she'd be first."

"She did. So I'm covering for her."

Then the kitchen door swung open and the entire house came in.

My mother was at the front, in a red coat, with a pink cake box in both hands.

A folded card was held between her teeth.

Dermot came behind her with a cardboard crown on his head.

Behind him came Maeve, in a wool hat and a new coat, walking slowly with a cane.

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