“But it’s your birthday.” His warm tears soaked through my running shirt and immediately chilled as I held him as tightly as possible. I would have done anything to take away this pain, to unsay what I knew had to be said. But I couldn’t take the bullet from Dad.
Gus cried himself out while Captain Wilson sat, patiently observing my mother and her nonresponse. I wondered how long it would be until words like “medicate” and “psychologist” were brought up. My mother was the strongest person I knew, but she’d always stood on the foundation that was my father.
Once the last of his little sobs shook his body, I asked him what he needed, if there was anything I could do to make this better for him. “I want you to have cake and ice cream.” He lifted his head off my chest and squeezed my hand. “I want it to be your birthday.”
Panic welled within me, my heart rate accelerating, tears pricking my eyes. Something fierce and terrible clawed at my insides, demanding release, demanding acknowledgment, demanding to be felt. I grimaced more than smiled and nodded my head exuberantly, cupping Gus’s sweet face. I turned my attention to Captain Wilson. “Can we take a ten minute break?”
The captain nodded slowly, as though he sensed I was close to losing it, his one stable person in a house of grieving women and children. “Is there anything you need?”
“Could you please call my Grams and check on her? She lost her husband in Vietnam . . .” It was all I could force out. I inched closer to the inevitable scream that welled up within my body.
“I can do that.”
I kissed Gus’s forehead, grabbed my keys, and ran out the door before I didn’t have the strength to stand any longer. I flung myself into the driver’s seat of my Volkswagen Jetta, my high school graduation present from my parents. Dad wanted me in something safe so I could make it home on weekends from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Too bad he wasn’t as protected in Afghanistan.
I forced the key into the ignition, cranked the engine, and backed out of the driveway too quickly. I tore down the hill, taking the curves, heedless with my safety for the first time since I got my driver’s license. In front of the grocery store, the stoplight turned red, and I became aware of the chill seeping into me, making my fingers tingle. The car read seventeen degrees outside, and I was still dressed for treadmill running. I hadn’t grabbed my coat. I parked the Jetta and walked into the grocery store, thankful for the numbing sensation in my arms and heart.
I found the bakery section and crossed my arms. Cake. Gus wanted a cake, so I would get him one. Chocolate. Vanilla. Strawberry. Whipped icing. Buttercream icing. There were too many choices. It was just a damned cake! Why did I need that many choices? Who cared? I grabbed the one nearest to me and headed for the ice cream section where I snatched a quart of chocolate chip cookie dough on autopilot.
I was halfway to the checkout counter when I ran into a small family. They were average: mom, dad, one boy, one girl. They laughed as they decided what movie to rent for that night, and the little girl won, asking for The Santa Clause. How was it possible these people were having such a normal day, such a normal conversation? Didn’t they understand the world had just ended?
“You know, they’ll write on that for you if you want his name on it.” The masculine voice broke me from my train of thought, and I looked up into a somewhat familiar set of brown eyes underneath a worn CU hat. I knew him, but couldn’t remember how. He was achingly familiar. Of course I would take note of a guy as hot as this one. But in a university with forty thousand other students, there was always someone who looked familiar, and there were very few who I could actually name, or even remember the details of how we’d met. With a face and body like that, I should have remembered this guy, even this shell-shocked.
The guy was waiting for me to say something.
“Oh, yeah, the cake.” My thoughts were fuzzy, and I was desperately holding on to what I had left of them. I nodded my head and muttered thanks as I headed back to the bakery. My feet moved of their own accord, thank God.
The heavyset woman behind the counter reached out to take the cake and I handed it over. “Could you write ‘happy birthday’ on this?”
“Sure can, honey. Whose special day is it?”
Special day? This was a day from hell. I stood there at the counter of the grocery store, with a cake I didn’t even care about, and realized this was unequivocally the worst day of my life. Maybe there should have been some comfort in that, knowing if this was the worst day, there was nowhere to go but up. But what if it really wasn’t the worst day? What if tomorrow was just waiting around the corner, ready to pounce and bring me to a new low?
“Miss?” My eyes focused back on the baker’s face. “Whose name would you like on the cake?”
“December.”
“Yes, ma’am, it is December, but whose name would you like on the cake?”
The same griefy-panic threatened to well up again in me, choking my throat. “It’s mine. My name is December.”
A string of giggles erupted from the baker. “But, ma’am, these are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It’s a boy’s cake!”
Something snapped inside me. The dam broke, the river raged, whatever pun came to mind. “I don’t care what kind of cake it is!”
“But surely you’d be happier—”
I’d had it. “No, I wouldn’t be happier. Do you know what would make me happy? I would like to go back to bed, and for none of this to have happened. I don’t want to be standing in the middle of this grocery store, buying a stupid cake so my little brother can pretend that our dad isn’t dead! So, no, I don’t care what kind of cake it is, Ninja Turtles or Barbie or Sponge Bob freaking Square Pants!”