So many, many more to come.
“Now,” he said, eyeing his pink confection with glee, unaware of my inner turmoil.
Always, always unaware.
“Shall we start with cake?”
Chapter 1
The Eighth Birthday
“Another year, another year, anotheryear has come,” sang the children gathered about the long table. Their voices rose, both in pitch and volume, as the final verse wound to a merciful end. “You are one year older now, so shout ‘Hooray!’ You’re done!”
The room filled with shrieks and giggles as Bertie, the day’s star, jumped on top of his chair and gave a great cheer of triumph before leaning in to blow out the nine candles topping the small nut cake.
“Start with me, Mama? Start with me?” he begged, his little voice piercing through the room’s tumult with far more clarity than it had any right to.
“Yes, yes,” our mother answered, pushing through the clamoring crowd of my siblings to the table’s edge with a practiced nudge of her hips. “After Papa, of course.”
She pulled the platter toward her and, with swift slices of the butter knife, cut a scant sliver of cake. She deposited it on a plateand pushed it down the length of the table to where our father sat watching the evening’s festivities play out with glassy eyes.
He’d opened a new cask of ale for the occasion and was already three mugs in. He grunted in acknowledgment as the first piece of cake—the biggest there would be, if my eyes calculated correctly—landed in front of him. Without waiting for the rest of us to be served, Papa picked up his fork and began shoveling it into his mouth.
My siblings began to wriggle with impatience. Every eye was on Mama as she sliced the remainder of the cake.
As itwashis birthday, Bertie got the next piece, and he crowed over its size, reckoning it was nearly as big as Papa’s.
Remy came next, then Genevieve, then Emmeline, and I began to lose interest. Mama was serving down the line of us, in birth order, and I was bound to be waiting for a long time to come.
Sometimes it felt as though I was fated to spend my entire life waiting.
Everyone began to eat their fill as soon as the plates appeared before them, noisily exclaiming how good it tasted, how rich and moist the cake was, how sweet the frosting.
As Mathilde—the third youngest—got her piece, I glanced over with interest at the remaining wedgelette, and a stupid spark of hope kindled inside me. My mouth watered as I dared to imagine how nutty my bites would taste. It didn’t matter that my serving would be not even half what Bertie was afforded, didn’t matter that there was barely a covering of icing on its surface; I would still receive a sample.
But Mama picked up the last piece and popped it between her lips without even bothering to serve it up on a plate first.
Bertie, who had been watching the rest of the portioning withgreedy eyes, hoping he might somehow snag a second helping, had the decency to remark upon it. “Mama, you forgot Hazel!”
Mama glanced down the long table and she did look surprised, as though she might have well and truly forgotten me, wedged away in the farthest corner, rubbing elbows with Mathilde and the cracked plaster wall.
“Oh, Hazel!” she exclaimed, and then raised her shoulders, not exactly with a look of apology, but more with an expression of “Well, what am I to do about it now?”
My lips tightened. It wasn’t a smile of forgiveness, only a grim acknowledgment of understanding. She hadn’t forgotten me and we both knew it, just like I also knew that there was nothing I could say or do that would cause her a moment of remorse, a pang of repentance.
“May I be excused?” I asked, my feet already swinging as I readied to jump down from a bench cut too tall for my tiny frame.
“Have you finished your chores?” Papa asked, startling, as if he had just noticed my presence. I didn’t doubt hehadforgotten about me. I took up a scant amount of room in both his house and his thoughts, little more than a footnote in the great, bloated volume of his life’s memoir.
The thirteenth child. The daughter never meant to have beenhis.
“No, Papa,” I lied, keeping my gaze downward, more on his hands than his face. Even direct eye contact with me took more energy than he was usually willing to spend.
“Then what are you doing in here, dawdling like a lazy wench?” he snapped.
“It’s my birthday, Papa,” Bertie interrupted, his blond eyebrowsfurrowed.
“So it is, so it is.”
