The pink icing from my birthday cake was still visible beneath the coffee grounds when Janice’s boss arrived carrying a plain records box.
He looked at the surviving gold balloon.
Then at my birthday dress.
Then at the dining table, where a dinner I had prepared for my 60th birthday had been transformed into a promotion dinner for my daughter-in-law.
Finally, he looked at Janice.
“Who cooked dinner?” he asked.
She answered without looking at me.
And then he slowly opened the box.
But to understand why the room suddenly went silent, you have to go back to the moment Janice first walked into my kitchen.
I was piping the second digit onto my birthday cake when I heard heels crossing the foyer.
The six looked decent.
The zero did not.
I leaned closer, trying to fix one crooked edge of frosting, when Janice appeared in the doorway carrying a garment bag in one hand and a leather tote in the other.
She looked at the cake.
Then at the gold balloons tied to my dining chairs.
Then at the birthday banner I had hung across the archway.
Her eyebrows drew together.
“What is all this?”
I waited for the joke.
None came.
“My birthday.”
“Tonight?”
I stared at her.
“Janice, I’m fairly sure it’s been tonight for 60 years.”
She didn’t smile.
Instead, she looked around the dining room again.
Then she said something that made me put down the piping bag.
