Chapter 1 - Bryce
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Cassie, happy birthday to you!”
I beamed at my daughter, Cassandra, who was turning seven, as I entered the living room with a cake. Her hair, as black as my own, was braided neatly, save for a few whisps that hung around her small face. Her eyes lit up, and she giggled as I got closer with her cake.
“Make a wish, Cassie!” I called out, laughing. I set her cake down on the mahogany dining table, placing my hands on her shoulders. “Go on,” I encouraged. “Make a wish, sweetheart.”
Squeezing her eyes closed, Cassie made her wish. Her eyebrows puckered, as though her wish was something sad, and I frowned, but quickly smoothed my worry out before her eyes opened.
“See what I did for the cake?” I asked Cassie, pointing out the iced figures. “There’s you, and there’s me.”
“I see it!” Cassie said happily. “But it makes me not want to eat it.”
The cake looked incredible, wide and thick, framed with blue and pink icing. It had been something that had been ordered, especially for my little girl’s day. It made my mouth water, but I knew I’d be hesitant to even have a piece.
Stop it, I told myself.It’s just cake. Have fun for your daughter’s birthday.
I laughed, holding her. “You can eat as much of it as you want.”
Gifts were piled up to one side of the living room, all wrapped in various shades of green, her current favorite color—last week it had been lilac. All of them were ribboned and waiting for Cassie, but she’d insisted on having cake first.
My home here was modest—all cozy decor, autumnal themes, and a basement below where I stored any and all remnants of my former life.
“Cass, you gotta blow out the candles,” I encouraged. “Want some help?”
She shook her head, insistent. “I can do it.”
“Well, nobody can ever deny you have my stubbornness,” I muttered, smiling.
I grabbed my phone and opened up my camera, rushing around to the other side of the table to take a picture. But as I framed Cassie in it, my heart stuttered at the empty space next to her. Her father should have been at her side, helping her blow out her birthday candles. He should have been there to sit her on his lap afterward, teasing her over what she wished for.
He wasn’t, and yet there was so much of him in Cassie’s face that I wondered how he couldn’t be. She shared my color, but the straight texture of his hair and those eyes—blue, like his, not like my own—were green. She was taller than I’d been at her age, a trait I could only assume her father had passed on, too.
My chest tightened, and I swallowed.
It’s been seven years, I told myself.You don’t need to think about him anymore. He’s not in your life, or Cassie’s, and never will be.
And I reminded myself that Cassie having no father was better than her having the asshole she would have had if he’d found out about her.
But he hadn’t.
He was back in Honeycreek, none the wiser about the seven-year-old girl celebrating her birthday without her father.
“What do I have of my daddy?” Cassie asked, those blue eyes blinking widely at me, and the pain seeped into my heart, and I wanted to cry for what she had already grown up without. I knew this day would come—the day when she would begin to ask questions about her father, her upbringing, where she was originally from—but somehow, I still wasn’t prepared.
“Plenty of things, baby,” I said, my voice too bright. “But how about, for now, we focus on how many awesome things you share with me? Like… Hmm, dancing? You love dancing, right?”
“Yeah!”
I gasped, all dramatic, succeeding in distracting her as I plucked a gift from the pile. “Well, that isamazing, because I have just the perfect gift for you.”
I held it out to Cassie, but she was too busy and not as distracted as I thought, looking at the picture of us in the icing. Her eyes were sad, her finger hovering over the space where a father would have stood on her other side.
“Cass?” I prompted. “You want to open up the gift?”
Cassie hummed, nodding, but the sad smile on her face broke my heart. Slowly, I put the gift back, sensing she wasn’t ready to be distracted yet.
“Why don’t I have a daddy, Mommy? Everyone else in class has one, but not me. I guess there’s Sarah, but she doesn’t have a mommy, and I told her that was sad. She got sadder, then, and shouted that I don’t have a daddy, so I’m not allowed to tell her she’s sad.”
