“Even tonight.”
“Because it’s your birthday?”
“No, sweetheart. Every night.”
She looked toward Seraphina.
That glance told me the answer had not settled anything.
I held out my hands.
“Would you like one now?”
She nodded.
I lifted her onto my lap.
The box remained between us until Nadine gently offered to hold it.
Ella let go.
Then she put both arms around my neck.
She held me tightly.
Not like a child who had been waiting through a long dinner.
Like a child who had been saving for something.
I rested one hand between her shoulder blades.
The other supported her legs.
She was warm and smelled faintly of the strawberry shampoo she insisted was different from the raspberry one.
I knew that smell.
I knew her.
I had somehow allowed her to believe access to me had become a purchase.
Behind her, Seraphina began speaking.
“Dominic, this is absurd.”
I looked at her over my daughter’s shoulder.
“Not another word until Ella and I have spoken.”
“You cannot possibly think—”
“Nadine, would you help us take this into the sitting room?”
My wife’s face tightened.
“This is your birthday dinner.”
“Yes.”
“People are waiting.”
I stood with Ella in my arms.
“They can go home.”
My sister, Mila, rose immediately.
“I’ll take care of it.”
She didn’t look at Seraphina.
She looked at the wooden box in Nadine’s hands.
Then she began helping the guests collect themselves.
Nobody sang.
Nobody asked for a photograph.
I carried my daughter out of the dining room while she kept her face against my neck.
At the sitting-room door, she whispered:
“Does this one count?”
I stopped.
“What do you mean?”
“Because I didn’t give it yet.”
I looked toward Nadine.
Her eyes filled.
Then I turned back to my child.
