Chapter 9: A Party for One Candle
The Harpers’ living room was small and cozy and absolutely covered in paper streamers. Lily had clearly been in charge of decorations. There were streamers on the lamp, streamers on the bookshelf, and one streamer tied, for reasons nobody explained, around the leg of the coffee table.
The party guests were exactly as Walt had promised: family, plus whoever Lily had invited.
That turned out to be me, the Harpers’ next-door neighbor Mr. Okafor, and Mrs. Lindqvist from across the street, who used to be Lily’s preschool teacher and laughed at everything.
Mr. Okafor was a tall, retired music teacher with a booming voice and the gentlest hands I’ve ever seen. He arrived holding a pecan pie like it was an award.
“I heard there was a cake,” he said. “But a party with only one dessert is not a party. It’s a meeting.”
Lily clapped. “Mr. Okafor makes the best pie in the whole state.”
“The whole country,” he corrected, very seriously. “But I’m humble, so I let people say state.”
Walt grilled burgers in the backyard with the spatula he’d been waving around at the door.
Rachel sat on the couch with a blanket over her knees, because she still tired easily, and every few minutes Lily brought her something: a glass of lemonade, a pillow, a drawing, a very small rock she’d found that looked “exactly like a potato.”
At one point, while Lily was showing Mrs. Lindqvist her rock collection, Rachel patted the couch next to her. I sat down.
“I’ve thought about you over the years, you know,” she said quietly. “Not by name. Just as ‘the daughter in the snow.’ I always hoped you were okay.”
I reached into my bag and pulled out the envelope. It was a little wrinkled and a little faded, with her name on the front in my handwriting from six years ago.
“I wrote this the night he died,” I said. “I never knew how to find you.
I’ve carried it from my old apartment to my new one, and it’s lived in my desk drawer ever since. I think it’s finally time it got delivered.”
Rachel took it carefully, with both hands. Exactly the way Lily had held the cake.
She opened it and read it. I won’t share everything I wrote, because some things belong only to the person they’re written for. But I’ll tell you the last line, because I remembered it word for word: “I couldn’t be there to hold his hand, so thank you for holding it for me. I hope someone is always there to hold yours.”
Rachel folded the card and held it against her chest for a while. “Someone was,” she said finally, looking across the room at her dad and her daughter. “Someone always was.”
Then she laughed and wiped her eyes on her cardigan sleeve.
“Okay. That’s enough crying on my new birthday. Where is my one candle?”
Lily gasped like she’d almost forgotten the most important part of the day. She ran to the kitchen and came back with the cake. The cake. The very same vanilla cake with white frosting that she’d carried home in the rain, one careful step at a time.
In the very center, standing straight and proud, was one single candle.
Walt lit it. Mr. Okafor, being a retired music teacher, insisted on leading the birthday song in three-part harmony, which nobody else could follow, so it sounded a bit like a choir of friendly geese. Mrs. Lindqvist laughed so hard she had to sit down. Lily sang the loudest. I sang too, and I didn’t care that my voice cracked.
“Make a wish, Mom,” Lily said.
Rachel closed her eyes for a long moment. Then she blew out the candle in one breath. Everyone cheered.
“What did you wish for?” Lily demanded.
“If I tell you, it won’t come true,” Rachel said.
“That’s not a real rule,” Lily said. “Grandpa made that up.”
