When I pulled into his driveway, balloons were tied to the mailbox.
Cars lined the curb.
Music drifted from inside the house.
He opened the door, saw me holding the cake, and his entire face changed.
“Mom,” he said, lowering his voice. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“It’s your birthday, sweetheart.”
He glanced behind him.
There were people laughing in his kitchen.
I could smell barbecue sauce and beer through the open door.
“It’s just a thing with Anna’s family,” he said. “This really isn’t a good time.”
He left me standing on his porch with the cake in my hands.
I cried so hard on the drive home that I had to pull into a gas station and sit there until the road stopped blurring.
I learned about my granddaughter Emily’s graduation from Facebook.
There she was in her cap and gown, smiling between Laura and her husband.
Nobody had told me the date.
Nobody had saved me a seat.
I mailed Emily five hundred dollars and a handwritten letter telling her how proud her grandfather would have been.
She texted back, “Thanks, Grandma.”
Nothing else.
When I slipped in the garage and fractured my wrist, Laura said she would come after work.
