Page 187 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

“Tamara?”

“Yes?”

“You’re staying for cake, right? Mom made my favorite.”

Mom. The word still touches the old bruise. But it no longer decides the whole day.

Anna moves past me with a stack of napkins. “Chocolate. What a shocker, right?”

Aleksander leans down, his mouth near my ear. “You’re smiling. I like it.”

“This is a child’s birthday party.”

“I’m aware.”

“Please also be aware there are witnesses.”

His hand settles briefly at my waist. “I’m being very well behaved,” he says.

“That’s true.”

I have the deeply inappropriate thought that a children’s birthday party is a terrible place to be in love with your husband.

The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur of blue frosting, paper crowns, and children negotiating rules no adult could possibly understand.

Aleksander is handed a stack of planet-themed plates and accepts the assignment with gravity. Anna catches my eye over the cake and nearly smiles. Ivan blows out all nine candles in one breath, then spends five minutes pretending not to be pleased when everyone claps.

By early evening, the last child leaves with a gift bag, a balloon, and enough sugar in the bloodstream to make the parents hate all of us by bedtime. The backyard quiets. Paper plates are stacked on the patio table. A smear of blue frosting has somehow reached the sleeve of Aleksander’s shirt.

Anna comes out carrying coffee, her hair slipping from its clip. “Presents now?”

Ivan appears behind her before she has finished the sentence. “Yes.”

The telescope waits on the hall table where Aleksander left it, silver paper intact. Ivan looks at it, then at me, trying very hard not to look as if he has been waiting for this all afternoon.

“Is that from you?” he asks.

“From us,” I say.

Aleksander lifts the box and sets it carefully on the patio table.

Ivan tears the paper slowly once he sees the picture underneath. For all his earlier impatience, he handles the box like something that might matter. When the telescope appears, his fingers move over the image on the cardboard. “No way.”

“You said the city has too much light,” I tell him. “And that your backyard has almost enough dark.”

His head comes up. “You remembered?”

“Yes.”

It’s the smallest possible answer. It still feels too large in my chest.

Ivan looks at Anna. “Can we set it up tonight?”

“After we read the instructions,” she says.

He groans, because he is nine and reasonable things don’t always make sense. Then he turns to me. “Can you help me set it up?”

The patio goes quiet enough for the question to reach every adult standing there. Anna stands beside the patio table. She doesn’t answer for me.