Chapter 32
LILY
Ruth's diner smells like bacon grease and sugar.
I push through the door at nine fifteen and the bell does its overhead rattle.
Ruth glances up from behind the counter like she'd been waiting, which she probably had.
The woman operates on a level of surveillance that would make intelligence agencies jealous.
"Birthday girl!" She smacks the counter with a dish towel, her face splitting into a grin. "Get in here. Sit down. I made you something."
"You didn't have to do that."
"I know I didn't have to. I wanted to. There's a difference and you're not too old to learn it."
She disappears into the kitchen and comes back with a plate. It's pancakes stacked tall, dusted with powdered sugar, a single candle shoved into the top at a slight angle. She sets it in front of me and lights the candle with a match she produces from behind her ear.
"Make a wish."
"Ruth…"
"Don't Ruth me. Blow."
I blow out the candle before I even have time to think of a wish, and Ruth claps twice, loud and satisfied, like she's closing a business deal. She slides into the booth across from me with her own coffee.
"Twenty-three." She studies me over the rim of her mug, her eyes sharp and warm at the same time. "I remember twenty-three. I had legs that could stop traffic and a mouth that could start a bar fight." She takes a sip. "Still have the mouth."
"You definitely still have the mouth."
"Don't be fresh."
I grin, because many people think she is a pain in the ass, but I kind of adore her.
"So."
"So."
"You and our handsome firefighter."
I cut into my pancakes with extreme focus and shove a big bite into my mouth.
“Why is this still worth talking about?”
"Sweetheart, this town never lets things go. Mabel saw you two at the store last week. She said he was carrying your bags and you were eating his fries right out of the container and he was letting you."
Ruth points at me with her coffee spoon, wielding it like a gavel. "Mabel says a man who lets a woman eat his fries without complaint is a man who has surrendered completely."
"Mabel should mind her business."
"Mabel hasn't minded her business since I met her in 1967 and she's not starting now." Ruth tears a piece off my pancake without asking, completely unbothered by concepts like personal boundaries.
"You know what I like about you two?"
"I'm sure you're going to tell me."
"He looks at you like he can't figure out how you got there. Like you just appeared in his life and he's still working out how that happens." She chews, considering. "My Frank used to look at me like that. Before he went bald and started talking to the television."
"Frank talks to the television?"
"Every night. He argues with the weather man. He thinks the weather man has a personal vendetta against our zip code."
“Sounds like you need to be putting your energy on Frank instead of me.”
“Ugh, Frank is a lost cause. But you and that boy have been eye-fucking each other for a year and now that it's out in the open I expect regular updates."
"You are not getting regular updates, you crazy woman."
"I will get what I get and I will get it from multiple sources and you know it." She sits back, immensely satisfied with herself. "How's your brother taking it?"
That's the question. I drag a piece of pancake through the powdered sugar and take my time answering.
"Rome is Rome. He'll come around."
"That means he hasn't come around."
"It means he's processing."
"Processing." Ruth repeats the word like it's a foreign food she isn't sure she likes.
"Men don't process, darling. They stew. They brood.
They rearrange the garage and call it personal growth.
Your brother is a good man, but he has the emotional vocabulary of a brick wall and he loves you so much it makes him stupid about it. "
"He'll come around," I say again, because repeating it helps me believe it.
Ruth reaches across the table and pats my hand, her rough palm warm against my skin.
"He will. Give him time. Men need time the way fish need water. Without it they just flop around on the ground looking foolish."
I finish my pancakes while Ruth delivers a full status report on the town. The new couple on Birch Street are arguing already, and the husband has a voice like a foghorn. The library is getting a new carpet. Someone's daughter came out, even though she is married with children.
"Where are your people today?" Ruth asks, topping off my coffee from the pot she'd brought to the table. "Birthday and you're in here with me? Not that I'm complaining."
"We're doing dinner tonight. Just me, Rome, and Erin."
"Small."
"I wanted small."
"What about your man?" she asks full of mischief.
"My man is free to be with his dad today." I wrap my hands around my mug, watching the steam rise. "And his mom, as always."
Ruth nods, sympathy washing through her eyes. She knows. Everyone in Harbor Hill knows what February sixteenth means to the Holts.
"How's Will handling the two of you?"
I laugh at that, genuinely. "A little too delighted, honestly. And way too smug. Apparently he suspected the whole time."
"Child, you two made it too obvious." Ruth shakes her head fondly. "You still deserve to celebrate your day, darling, just as he does."
"We did. At exactly midnight, we met halfway between our houses and ate cake together."
Ruth puts her hand over her heart. "That is the sweetest and saddest thing I have heard."
"It is what it is. And just this once."
Because next birthday I won't be here. Next birthday I'll be somewhere else, and Callahan will be here, without me.
I push that thought down before it can take deeper root.
"Happy birthday, sweetheart." Ruth slides out of the booth, dish towel over her shoulder. "Twenty-three looks good on you."
"Everything looks good on me, Ruth. We've been over this."
"Lord, the ego on this child." She's grinning as she walks away, already hollering at someone in the kitchen about something unrelated.
I sit in the booth and drink my coffee and watch Harbor Hill move past the window.
A woman walking a dog that's really walking her. A kid on a bike, too cold for it, loving it anyway. The Santa hat on the fountain statue, cheerful and defiant against the dull February sky.
Twenty-three. I've thought about today for weeks, turned it over in my head, tried to make sense of it. My birthday has always been simple. Rome made dinner or took me somewhere nice, birthday cake at whatever restaurant we picked, everything I wished for wrapped up in an evening with my brother.
This year is different. This year my birthday shares a day with a grief that wasn't mine, but has become mine because I love the people it belongs to.
I also know the Holt men well enough to know what February fifteenth and sixteenth might look like inside that house. I wasn't going to wedge my birthday candles into the middle of it.
So I told Callahan I wanted the day with Erin and Rome. Told him Will needed him. Told him I'd see him tomorrow and it would be fine. Begged him not to get me a present, as long as we met at midnight between our birthdays.
He'd driven me home when he found out I'd walked to meet him at midnight, and with one last hug that lasted longer than any other, he'd driven back to be with his father.
I finish my coffee, leave Ruth a tip that will annoy her, and cross the street to my apartment.
The restaurant is on the quieter end of Harbor Hill, the fanciest the town has to offer. White tablecloths, candles on every table, the kind of menu where everything has a wine pairing and nothing costs enough to make Rome flinch.
He's already there with Erin, tucked into a too-big corner table that feels private without being hidden.
Erin stands and pulls me into a hug that smells like her perfume and feels like home.
Rome stands and kisses the top of my head and murmurs happy birthday against my hair and pulls my chair out for me. I sit and feel good. Simple and good.
"You look beautiful," Erin tells me.
"Obviously," I say, keeping the mood light.
"The humility," Rome drawls. "Really moving."
"It's my birthday. I'm not required to be humble on my birthday."
Erin gives me a small wrapped box, and inside is a bracelet with a pressed flower sealed into the clasp.
A dahlia. It was the first bucket I ever trimmed in her shop, when I was new to Harbor Hill and new to her and didn't know yet that she would become one of my favorite people on earth.
I have to press my lips together very hard because I'm not going to cry in the first fifteen minutes.
Rome gives me earrings with diamonds and my birthstone, amethyst, delicate and perfect. I stare at them and blink hard.
"Don't you dare cry on me, Lil."
"I'm not crying," I say, fooling no one. "I have a condition."
"You have the same condition every time we do something nice for you."
"It's chronic."
He gives my shoulder a gentle shove and composes himself, not letting a trace of his own emotions show. Erin and I exchange a look, rolling our eyes but watching him fondly.
Twenty minutes into dinner, the door opens and Ramsey walks in first. Then Poppy, grinning so wide I can see it from across the restaurant, carrying a gift bag the size of a small child.
Behind them, Gran, moving with quiet elegance, one hand on her purse and the other on Vera's arm. Beth is behind them, already scanning the room for our table.
I catch Erin's eye. She's smiling into her wine glass, not surprised at all.
"You didn't," I breathe, my throat tightening.
"I may have coordinated a few things."
Poppy descends first, pulling me out of my chair for a hug that lifts me off my feet, kissing both my cheeks, shoving the gift bag into my arms.
"Happy birthday, you beautiful psychopath. Open it later, it's inappropriate."
Gran cups my face and studies me, her eyes sharp and tender at once.
"Twenty-three. Still a baby."
"I'm a grown woman, Gran."
"You're a baby and you'll be a baby when you're forty. That's how it works." She kisses my cheek. "Happy birthday, darling."