Page 85 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

Emma helped me blow up the remaining balloons. She had the lung capacity of a marathon runner and the focus of a hummingbird, which meant balloons were inflated with great enthusiasm and then immediately released to fly around the room while she chased them, shrieking. We tied them to door handles, light fixtures, the hallway table, anywhere that would hold a knot.

The streamers went up next. Josh and I handled those, twisting pink and gold ribbons together and taping them along the hallway walls. My shoulder throbbed with every reach above my head but I did not stop because this was for Chloe and a man does not stop decorating his woman’s birthday hallway because of a bullet wound.

Emma made signs. She sat at the kitchen table with every crayon she owned and drew dinosaurs holding flowers on sheets of paper, writing HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMA in letters of wildly varying sizes across each one. We taped them to the walls between the streamers.

By seven-thirty, the kitchen was transformed. Streamers. Balloons. A crooked banner. Dinosaur signs. A lopsided cake with a green frosted dinosaur. Plates stacked. Coffee made. The whole room looked like a party had collided with a natural disaster, and it was exactly right.

We were finishing the last touches when Emma’s voice cut through the careful quiet we had been trying and failing to maintain.

“Papa, the cake has a dinosaur on it!”

“Shh, Emma. We are being quiet.”

“WHY ARE WE BEING QUIET?”

“Because Mama is sleeping.”

“OH. OKAY.” Then, in what she believed was a whisper: “Papa, the dinosaur looks like Sir Chomps-a-Lot.”

I heard a sound from the bedroom. A shift. The creak of the bed. She was awake. I looked at Dollie. Dollie looked at Josh. Josh looked at his party hat with the resigned expression of a man who had accepted his fate.

Emma crept to the bedroom door. Opened it a crack. One eye. Then both eyes. Then her entire face.

“Mama. Are you awake?”

A pause. Chloe’s voice, muffled and sleepy. “I might be.”

“Can you stay asleep for five more minutes?”

“Why?”

“No reason.”

“Emma.”

“No reason, Mama. Just stay asleep. Close your eyes.”

The door closed. Emma sprinted back down the hallway, her bare feet slapping on the floor, the opposite of subtle.

“She is awake! She is awake! Hurry up!”

I straightened the plates. Checked the cake. Wiped a smear of frosting off the counter. My hand was steady but my chest was not. It was doing something that I would never admit to, a tightening, a fullness, the feeling of a man who had spent a decade in silence and was now standing in a kitchen full of balloons waiting to surprise the woman he loved on a birthday she had forgotten.

“Everyone ready?” I said.

We lined up. Dollie in front, hands on her hips. Josh beside me with his plates and his hat. Emma in the center, holding the cake with both hands, her face nearly splitting in half from the grin. I stood at the back, my arm in the sling, my expression under control, or what I believed was under control until Dollie looked at me and said, “Sawyer, you are smiling.”

“I am not.”

“You are absolutely smiling.”

“Focus, Dollie.”

Chloe appeared in the doorway.

She was wearing my flannel shirt. The one she had stolen weeks ago and claimed as her own, too big for her, the sleeves hanging past her hands, the hem hitting mid-thigh. Her hair was messy. Her feet were bare. She looked like she had just woken up, which she had, and she looked like the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, which she was.

Her eyes moved across the room. The streamers. The balloons. The banner, still crooked. The signs with the dinosaurs and the flowers. Dollie beaming. Josh with his plates. Emma with the cake. And me, standing at the back, watching her face change as the realization hit.