At nine-fifteen there was no knock at the door. Andre lit the single candle and carried the cupcake to the island, smiling because he loved his boy and refusing to make that smile an apology for someone else. Nia stood beside Caleb while he sang a ridiculous song about dinosaurs eating birthday cake. For a few seconds the children laughed, and Andre believed he had rescued the morning. Then the question came, and everything he had carefully arranged fell apart on the kitchen counter.
After Caleb blew out his candle, Andre cut the cupcake into three pieces, though there was no practical reason to divide something so small. They ate it together while Nia described a game she'd invented for the afternoon. Aunt Iris was coming with balloons and several of Caleb's friends were due after lunch. Andre had already borrowed two folding tables and fixed the old backyard sprinkler so the children could run through the water. The party would not be expensive. It would be loud, happy, and unmistakably Caleb's.
Halfway through breakfast, Nia asked permission to tell him something. She waited until her brother had gone to the living room to open a box of building blocks. Then she slid off her stool and stood beside Andre with both hands twisted in the hem of her dress.
"Grandma Barbara told me something," she said. "I think Caleb heard."
Barbara was Camille's mother. She lived thirty minutes away and considered herself a woman who said difficult things because other people were too afraid to say them. Over the years, she had praised Andre's work ethic in public and questioned his ambition in private. Since Camille moved away, Barbara had made an art of calling Andre inflexible while pretending not to judge him.
"What did she say?" he asked.
Nia glanced down the hallway. "She said Mommy's life would've been easier if she hadn't had another baby. Grandma said Mommy already had me and then things got too hard. Caleb was playing under the table with his cars. Grandma didn't know he was listening."
Andre felt his pulse in his throat. Barbara had visited two weeks earlier, bringing Nia a school sweater and Caleb a packet of pencils. Andre had been in the garage fixing a neighbor's heater. He had trusted her not to make either child a witness to adult bitterness.
"Did she say anything else?"
"She said you made Mommy stay here when she could've been somebody important. I told Grandma you fix schools and that's important too. She laughed." Nia's mouth trembled, but she lifted her chin. "I told Caleb she was wrong. He asked me if babies can make grown-ups unhappy. I didn't know what to say."
Andre knelt in front of his daughter. "You shouldn't have had to answer that question. That was my job. I'm sorry you felt like you had to protect your brother by yourself."
Nia blinked hard. "If I tell you things, will you and Mommy get mad at each other?"
"You can tell me the truth," he said. "What the grown-ups do with it is our responsibility, not yours."
She nodded, but she did not look relieved until he added, "And you are allowed to be eight. You don't have to take care of the whole house."