“Don’t look so scared, Aunt Jo,” Kitty said.
“It’s not like we’ll strand you somewhere,” Mia said, grabbing me by both hands and lifting me to my feet.
I rolled my eyes, which the girls didn’t see, thanks to the sleep mask. “It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve ditched me.”
“Which turned out great,” Mia said. “You should thank us.”
“Can I at least put on shoes?”
“You don’t need them,” Kitty said.
When we stepped outside, I recognized the grit of the concrete walkway, the five steps up to the beach, and the squeak of the gate, so it didn’t surprise me when the ground turned to sand beneath me.
“Okay,” Mia said. She released her grip on me after we’d walked down the beach a few hundred feet, the ocean growing louder with each step. “Mask off.”
I lifted the mask from my face. The sunrise stretched out like a haloabove the horizon, and when my eyes adjusted to the light, I spotted a long table draped in heavy seafoam-green cloth: a breakfast buffet of all my favorite things, including chocolate chip waffles, pitchers of orange juice (Drunken Joeys, too, from the looks of it), and a birthday cake in the middle of the table, the frosting blush pink. A beach picnic of my very own.
“Wow,” I said, taking in the food and the people standing around it: Nina, Ollie, Alex, and Greyson. Alex and Greyson shouted, “Happy birthday!” while Nina and Ollie shouted, “Happy birthday, bitch!” and, “Happy fucking birthday!” respectively.
I pulled Mia and Kitty into a hug. “You did all this for me?”
“There’s still one more surprise,” Kitty said.
I turned at a tap on my shoulder, my breath catching in my chest at the sight of my sister standing before me. I barreled into her, the two of us nearly toppling into the sand. “You’re here!” I said, bursting into tears and not caring who heard.
“Happy birthday, Jo,” Beth said. She held me tight, and the two of us cried into each other’s hair, rocking from side to side.
There was so much I wanted to say, but I could hardly speak. “You’re here!” was all I could say, over and over, unable to let go of her.
“Okay, okay,” Mia grumbled. “Enough of the lovefest, I’m hungry.”
Beth put her arm through mine and sat beside me at the table. With my sister on my left, and Alex to my right, so many of the people I loved surrounding me, I couldn’t stop smiling. If only Mr. Silicon Valley could see me now.
Beth gestured to the table. “This is beautiful,” she said. “I knew my daughters were crafty, but I didn’t know they werethiscrafty.”
“We’re not,” Kitty said. “Nina and Alex are.”
“You girls have always been great at delegating,” Beth said.
“ ‘Delegating’ is a nice word for it. Those two are bossy,” Nina said.
Beth laughed. “I can’t argue with that. You two bossed poor Samson all over the place.”
Samson’s name was a prick of pain, especially today. But instead of dulling the sting of it by steering the conversation elsewhere, I let it flood through me until it dissolved like sugar under the tongue, no longer solid, but still there.
“It’s true,” I said. “Kitty, remember when you tricked him into putting your laundry away by telling him you’d left a twenty-dollar bill in your pocket and he could keep it if he found it?”
“You were so upset when he wised up to that one,” Beth said to Kitty.
“Yeah,” Kitty said. “But it was nice while it lasted.”
Beth looked around me to Alex. “Thank you for taking such wonderful care of my sister on her birthday, Chef Alex.”
“Mia and Kitty promised me fifty bucks,” he said. “But I’m guessing that’s not happening.”
I nudged him with my shoulder. “I’m teasing,” he said. “I’d cook you a birthday breakfast for only twenty dollars.”
I swept my gaze around the table, the same glow of happiness I’d felt at my dinner party washing over me, only stronger. I rolled my eyes at Nina and Ollie’s bickering and the apron Alex gifted me, then shook with laughter at the birthday song and dance written, choreographed, and performed by Mia, Kitty, and Greyson. Alex made Beth and me cry when he brought out a second cake for Samson, decorated in ferns, and flowers, and even a Venus flytrap. After singing a tearful “Happy Birthday” to him, Mia, Kitty, Beth, and I shared our favorite Samson memories.
