Chapter 3

The guests thinned out through the front door in groups of two and three, the way water drains from a sink — fast at first, then slower, with people whose departure times had to be negotiated with their own feet. A woman in a lilac dress pressed her hand to Aaron's arm on the way past, a touch that said more than the words she didn't say. A man in his fifties nodded once, mouth tight. One couple slipped out through the side kitchen door without passing the threshold at all.

By the time the clock on the wall read 4:20, the house had fallen into a different silence. The balloons still hung in clusters over the table, the cake still sat with its eleven candles burned down to smoke, the punch bowl still held its pink drink. Thirty chairs ringed the room, and twenty-seven of them had been pushed back, and the three that had not been touched stood in front of empty plates.

Mateo watched the last guest go. Then he turned to his father, his small hands flat on the armrests, and said, "We still have cake."

Aaron breathed out. It came out ragged, and he realized he'd been holding his chest stiff since the slap. He walked over to the table and crouched down so he was level with his son. The green cushion was soft under his knuckles. Mateo's eyes were steady, wide, the eyes of a child who had watched a room decide something.

"Hey," Aaron said, low. "I'm sorry. I ruined your party."

"You didn't ruin it." Mateo's voice was small but certain. "She did. She just didn't know it yet."

Aaron's chest tightened. He looked at the dinosaur figurine in Mateo's hand — a green plastic stegosaurus, the one Aaron had mailed him for Christmas with a note about fossils, and the boy had placed it beside the cake himself, a tiny guardian for the only name that mattered. His son had known his dad was coming. Even when the cake said Dad with no question, even when Renee had slid a stranger's name card into the head seat, Mateo had kept the dinosaur in his pocket, waiting.

"Can I hold it?" Aaron asked.

Mateo handed it over. The plastic was warm from his fingers. Aaron turned it over once, then gave it back, and Mateo took it with a slight nod, like a borrower accepting the return of a valuable.