Chapter 23: Twenty-Nine

Waylon's cake leaned.

It leaned to the left, and the lemon glaze had run off the high side and pooled on the plate.

Seven people crowded around Waylon's kitchen table, and nobody said a word about it.

"I used your recipe," he said. "From the pan. I watched you the night we ate it."

"You did not measure the flour."

"I measured it by looking."

"That's why it's tilting."

"It's a design choice."

His aunt put a single candle in the top.

Ray had his reading glasses on.

Brent's wife held her son up so he could see.

The old man from the first booth had brought a bottle of cherry brandy, which he said was medicinal.

They sang.

Nobody in my family had ever sung to me.

We sang at Camille's parties, and at Mom's, and Dad's.

I had stood in the back with a knife and a stack of paper plates, and watched.

Now I stood in front of a lopsided cake with a single candle.

The creek went past the window, and the whole room sang off-key at me.

My voice caught somewhere in the second verse.

"Make a wish," Waylon said.

"I don't know what to wish for."

"Wish for anything."

I looked at the faces around the table.

I closed my eyes, and I blew out the candle.

The room clapped.

Her son clapped late, and loudest.

"What did you wish?" he asked, in his small, serious voice.

"I can't say, buddy. It won't come true."

"It already did," Waylon said, so quietly that only I heard it.

The cake was dry on one side and perfect on the other.

I ate two slices.

His wife told me over the dishes that her lawyer had a letter in with the bank.

The house was hers, whatever happened next.

"He keeps leaving me voicemails," she said. "I haven't played one."

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