14. Simon
FOURTEEN
SIMON
It was Olivia's fourteenth birthday.
I'd known it was coming for weeks. I'd watched the date approach with the particular, suffocating feeling of things you aren't ready for but can't stop.
Fourteen. Elena had been there for thirteen of them.
She'd been there for the first one, obviously.
She'd been the one who made it possible. I'd been in that hospital room.
I'd held Olivia before Elena had fully recovered from the delivery, her whole warm weight settling trustingly into the crook of my arm, and I'd known, right then, that I'd love this child fiercely for the rest of my life.
I woke before anyone else in the house and lay flat in the dark, thinking about my sister.
Elena would have been up before anyone. She'd have decorated the kitchen the night before, then decided in the harsh morning light that it wasn't enough and done more.
She'd have baked an elaborate cake from scratch, the complicated one Olivia had demanded since she was small, and cooked Olivia's huge birthday breakfast, and set the table, and she'd have been humming something under her breath when Olivia finally came downstairs.
She'd have done all of it without making it a performance, without needing to be thanked, just doing it because Olivia was her daughter, and her daughter deserved to wake up to something beautiful.
The kitchen would be empty this morning.
That was the brutal fact of it. Olivia would come downstairs, and the house would be as it had been for eight months, clinically clean, functional, and missing the warmth Elena had kept running in every room she occupied.
I hadn't known how to replicate it. I honestly didn't know if it was even possible.
Some things in this life just don't have substitutes.
I got out of bed. I pulled on my clothes. I walked to the door of my bedroom and stopped.
Something warm and sweet was drifting up through the floorboards. Something was baking.
I stood in the hallway a long moment. Then I headed down the stairs.
I stopped in the kitchen doorway and didn't go in.
Small, colorful balloons were tied around the backs of the island stools, and two larger ones floating near the back door showed the numbers one and four in shiny gold, lit by the early morning sun from the window.
The heavy table had been shifted to make room for the display. Crepe paper streamers ran along the top of the cabinets. A small banner strung above the window spelled out HAPPY BIRTHDAY in uneven, colorful letters, the kind you grab in a hurry from a cheap party supply store.
And Violet stood at the counter, her back to me, icing a cake.
Her shoulders sloped forward, a small tired stoop, like she'd been planted in that one spot half the morning. Her dark hair was knotted messily back, stray strands escaping to frame her face. She hadn't heard me come down.
I stood there, just looking at her.
My throat went tight. It wasn't grief, though it lived right next door to it. Elena had always done this. Elena had stood in messy kitchens in the early morning and made magic happen for Olivia before Olivia was even awake to see the effort.
My sister had simply done it, knowing what her daughter needed and never asking to be thanked for it. I'd watched her do it for years. I hadn't understood, until right now, that I should have been holding onto every detail of it.
Violet hadn't been asked to do this. Nobody had told her what Elena would have done, or what this morning would have looked like if the accident hadn't happened. She'd just been paying attention. She'd gotten up hours before anyone else and made something out of nothing.
I stepped fully into the kitchen.
She heard me then and spun around. There was white flour dusted on her cheek and smeared on the sleeve of the oversized shirt she'd slept in. Her eyes went wide, darting from the kitchen, to the balloons, to the crooked banner, to the cake on the counter, then back to me.
"What's all this?" I asked quietly.
She let out a long breath. "I had Manuel run out and get the balloons last night.
" She gestured helplessly at the banner.
"And I found a basic kit online. I just wanted it to be a surprise for her when she woke up.
" She winced. "The cake took three separate tries.
Making icing apparently isn't my strongest skill. "
I looked over at the cake. Bright green icing. HAPPY 14 LIV. The second L was noticeably taller than the first.
"Why did you do all this?" My voice came out thick.
She looked at me a long moment. "I figured heavy days like this would have you deep in your own head. And I really wanted to take some of that weight off you, if I could."
The pressure behind my eyes came on fast.
I stared at her. She had flour on her face, and her dark hair had half-escaped its knot, and she was looking right at me with a steadiness that had nothing demanding in it.
"Thank you," I managed.
She waved the gratitude off. "Don't. It's happening."
"Violet."
"I really mean it, Simon. We're moving on."
I didn't move on. I stood planted in the kitchen and looked at the balloons she'd hung, and the lopsided cake she'd baked, and the flour on her sleeve, and I thought about Elena.
Sleepy footsteps came down the main stairs.
Olivia shuffled around the corner in her pajamas, her dark hair loose and tangled, barely awake, and stopped.
She looked blankly at the kitchen. She looked up at the balloons.
She looked at the crooked banner. She looked at the green cake on the counter, and finally she looked at Violet standing nervously beside it with a dish towel over her shoulder.
Olivia's eyes filled with tears, and her mouth pressed into a tight, trembling line.
"I wasn't expecting—" She stopped, choking on a sob, and pressed her lips together. "I honestly wasn't expecting anything today."
"Well, that's just silly," Violet said.
Olivia crossed the kitchen in three quick strides and threw her arms around her.
I watched my niece hold onto Violet with both arms, her chin buried in Violet's shoulder. I watched Violet wrap her arms around the teenager and hold on right back, and I saw that Olivia was crying. Deep, heaving crying she'd clearly been holding in for a long time.
She was crying for the birthday cake, and she was crying for her dead mother. Both at the same time, the grief and the gratitude sitting together, because in this house, they always arrived together.
Olivia eventually pulled back, wiping her wet face with the back of her hand. She looked at Violet. "Thank you."
"There's really no need," Violet said.
"There is."
"There really isn't." Violet looked around the messy kitchen, then at both of us. "I still have a few things to finish in here. You two should go for a morning walk. Go down to the lake."
I shook my head. "I'm not leaving you in here to do all this yourself."
"I have Manuel to help. And you really don't need to worry about the rest of it. Go spend some time with her." She looked at me, her chin lifting in command. "Go."
I looked over at Olivia. Olivia looked back at me.
We went.
I didn't want to leave. Standing in that kitchen with the balloons and the flour and the warmth Violet had built from scratch that morning, my chest was full in a way it hadn't been in eight long months. I walked toward the door only because she'd told me to.
Olivia and I headed down the sloping path to the lake.
We sat at the edge of the wooden dock, dangling our feet above the cold water, the morning air brisk and still around us. The wide lake held the early light in long, flat, glittering strips. We didn't say anything for a while.
Then Olivia spoke. "Mom always said the lake was a really special place for her. She said it was yours and hers."
I looked out at the glassy water. "It is. There's a reason for that."
Olivia turned her head to look at me, waiting.
I told her the story.
"We were young," I began. "Elena was twelve, I was fourteen.
This is where our family came during the summers.
Elena couldn't swim. Neither could I, not well.
We'd both been forced into lessons that gave us the theory of swimming without any of the confidence.
I was showing off on the very edge of the dock, right where it drops off into the deeper water.
" I paused, the memory surfacing. "I slipped. "
Olivia turned to face me fully, caught.
"I went straight in. The cold hit my lungs, and I panicked.
The panic was the real problem, not the depth.
I couldn't get my arms to listen to my brain.
I was going under." I stared at the rippling water.
"Elena was on the dock right above me, screaming for help.
There were adults further up the shore. She was screaming and pointing, and I could see her terrified face from below the surface. "
"And then what happened?" Olivia breathed.
"She stopped screaming."
Olivia's eyes went wide.
"She jumped in. She couldn't swim. She knew she couldn't swim. She jumped in anyway. She grabbed my hand underwater." I paused. "We went down into the dark together. We were still holding hands when someone finally pulled us both out."
Olivia let out a shaky breath that was almost a laugh, the disbelief still working its way across her face. "She jumped in knowing she couldn't swim?"
"She did."
"Oh my God."
"Afterward, when the adults were wrapping us in towels and asking a million frantic questions," I said, a sad smile touching my lips, "someone asked Elena why she hadn't just kept calling for help.
Why she jumped in instead." I looked at Olivia.
"She thought about it a moment and said, 'I didn't want to leave him.
I'd rather have died with him than watched. '"
Olivia's eyes filled with fresh tears.
She looked out at the water and didn't say anything for a long, heavy moment. "She really loved you," she whispered.