I didn’t plan on cake. I didn’t plan on candles. I planned on an easy night, takeout cartons on the counter, a quiet drive later with a cup of black coffee and a radio station that still played Springsteen.
Forty‑six isn’t a number that needs a party.
It’s a number that needs peace. What I didn’t plan on was my daughter looking up from a glittering circle of friends and saying, with the kind of smile kids learn from television, “You’re a nobody.”
The room was our dining room but didn’t feel like mine anymore.
The new chairs Lisa had picked were too pale to sit on without thinking of stains, and the wine she poured herself looked like expensive medicine. She’d invited people I didn’t know—beautiful, polished people who wore cologne that didn’t smell like anything real and laughed with their teeth.
My daughter, Madison, sat with them, legs tucked under, scrolling, showing something on her phone and letting the light from the screen do the work a sun used to do in this house.
“Is that your dad?” one of the girls asked. Madison’s eyes cut over to me. “Yeah.
He fixes toilets.
Thinks that makes him a man.”
They laughed the way people laugh when they’re trying out cruelty like a new jacket. I had a hand on the back of a chair.
I removed it. The knot in the wood beneath my palm had always looked like an eye; now it felt like one.
Lisa lifted her glass—my wife, who used to read dog‑eared paperbacks in a thrift‑store cardigan and meet me at the bus stop after my apprenticeship classes—and said, “It’s time you knew the truth.” She gestured across the table as if presenting a gift.
“This is Derek. He owns three restaurants. He’s more of a man than you’ve ever been.
You were always just temporary.”
No one told her to stop.
No one looked at me the way you’re supposed to look at a person on his birthday. Somewhere, a fork tapped a plate like a tiny gavel.
I didn’t throw the wine. I didn’t shout.
I didn’t beg for what had already been taken.
I picked up the house key that had lived in my pocket long enough to rub its shape into the lining and set it gently beside the napkins. Then I walked upstairs, opened the closet, and laid a duffel on the bed. Socks.
Jeans.
Work boots. The navy work shirt with my stitched name over the pocket, JAMES, the thread a little frayed at the J.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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