“Surprise!” Emma shouts excitedly when I walk in the door. “Come on! We have to show you!” She grabs my hand and tugs me past a smiling Hallie into the dining room, decorated for a birthday. I’m very confused. My birthday is in July, and Emma’s is next month.
“I…” I stare, looking around, and then see a chocolate cake on the table. Or, half of a chocolate cake.
“Happy half-birthday!” Emma shouts.
“A half birthday?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s your half-birthday today,” Hallie answers low. I stare at her for a moment, trying to pin the date and do math, and I realize she’s right: itismy half-birthday. “Half birthdays are very important to celebrate.”
It’s so incrediblyHallieto celebrate half-birthdays.
“How did you know it was my half-birthday?”
“I know everyone’s half birthday. I usually just grab a cookie or something from the bakery and hand-deliver it, but Emma wanted to celebrate and try her hand at baking. She made it all herself. I just helped with getting it in and out of the oven.”
I look to my daughter, who smiles at me with so much pride it hurts my heart. “Really?”
She nods excitedly.
“But,” Hallie says, giving my daughter a bit of a side-eye. She rolls her eyes, and I want to tell her to drop the attitude, but it seems Hallie has some balance of her own on what she calls out and doesn’t. “But like I said, when he texted that he would be late, there’s a chance your dad wants you to go to bed.” Emma opens her mouth, but Hallie keeps talking. “And like we talked about andlike you agreed to thirty minutes ago, if that’s the case, we will save it for tomorrow night.”
There’s a mini staredown between Hallie and Emma before my daughter turns to me, her face sweet as the cake sitting on the dining room table, as she smiles up at me.
“Daddy, can we please eat cake tonight?”
I hold it in for all of ten seconds as I stare at Emma, whose eyes are comically wide, her hands slapped beneath her chin like a caricature of someone who is well-behaved. I let out a loud laugh soon, though, shaking my head and scrubbing a hand over her hair.
“Dad!” Emma whines as I walk away, moving to the kitchen to open a drawer where the lighter is, then turning to the girls with it in the air.
“Do we need candles for a half-birthday cake?” There’s a squeal of excitement and ayes!from the dining room, and I can’t help but laugh. I might be bone tired, but somehow a slice of cake with my two favorite girls feels like exactly what I need right now.
“What were you guys watching?” I ask an hour later as I sink into the couch beside Hallie after getting Emma to bed. A movie is paused, with a familiar set of actors I can’t quite place on the screen, but it looks much older than anything Emma enjoys watching.
Hallie laughs, then shakes her head. “I found out today your daughter has never seen the classics.”
I lift an eyebrow at her. “The classics?”
“Mary-Kate and Ashley movies.”
I blink at her, then let out a laugh. “I don’t know if those are considered classics.”
“Excuse me, they absolutely are. Wren and I watched them a million times. Hell, one year we made an entire vision board based on them,” she says with an amused laugh. “We made this whole plan, basicallyAround the World in 80 Days, but with Mary-Kate and Ashley.”
I wonder momentarily if it’s in that pink box with the rest of her vision boards.
“You know, I remember Wren loving them, but I don’t think I ever watched one.”
She looks at me, her jaw dropping and her eyes wide. “You’ve never seenone?”
“Hallie, in what universe would I have watched a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie?”
“You have a little sister. You have adaughter!”
“My sister is five years younger than me, and I hate to tell you, Hal, but kids these days aren’t sitting around watching Mary-Kate and Ashley movies.”
“Maybe it would solve a lot of the youths’ issues if they did.”
“Did you just saytheyouths?”
