Chapter 71

Chapter 71
Boston

On the morning of April twenty-first, my house looks like a diaper commercial got jumped by a party store.
There are pastel gift bags on the dining room table, two sheet-cake order receipts on the counter, a stack of paper crowns Nora insisted we needed because “birthdays need hats,” and three bassinets positioned around the living room like we’re running a very cute emergency command center.
I’m holding Ollie against my chest while Lydia works herself toward either a bottle or a political uprising and Miles kicks in the bassinet like he’s got somewhere urgent to be. Hard to say which. Nora’s under the coffee table with markers, tongue sticking out, drawing what she swears is me.
It looks like a blue potato with dark hair.
I love it anyway. Aspen passes through the room carrying folded onesies and her coffee like she’s on her fourth job of the morning, which she probably is. “Did you call about the extra chairs?”
“Yep.”
“The cookies.”
“Picked up yesterday.”
“The balloons.”
“Dad’s grabbing them.”
She stops beside the couch and narrows her eyes at me. “Why are you being so efficient?”
I grin up at her. “Maybe I’ve matured.”
“Absolutely not.”
Fair enough. She bends and kisses Lydia’s head on her way to the kitchen, then reaches down to steady Miles when he starts fussing, and I watch her move with that mix of exhaustion and force she’s been carrying since Lydia and Miles came home and Ollie followed. She’s still softer through the middle, still healing in places nobody sees unless she lets them, and still somehow the most capable person in every room she enters.
I think about telling her that again, but the baby in the swing starts fussing, which is basically the universe’s way of saying admiration can happen while moving.
So I cross the room, shift Ollie higher on my shoulder, and spend the next ten minutes doing the kind of ridiculous bouncing rhythm that only makes sense if you’ve become fluent in newborn.
Nora pops up from under the table with marker on one cheek. “Daddy.”
“Yeah, Bug.”
“Do I hafta share cake with Uncle Jackson?”
“You specifically,” I say, “are legally required to share cake with everybody.”
Her face scrunches. “That’s rude.”
“It’s called community.”
She considers that, then decides not to respect it.
I’ve always loved this day in spite of myself.
That sounds stupid when I think it straight through, but it’s true.
The shared birthday used to mean chaos even when we were broke, even when the house smelled like smoke and old beer, even when Heather was three kinds of unreliable, and Dad had to work twice as hard to make one day feel normal. Sometimes she showed up drunk. Sometimes she showed up late. Sometimes she made promises days in advance and then never made it through the door.
The worst part wasn’t always the leaving. Sometimes it was the waiting. I still remember sixteen, standing on the front steps with Lincoln behind me and Dallas half asleep against the porch rail because he’d insisted he wasn’t going to bed till we knew whether she was coming. She’d called at noon saying she had presents, cake, and some story about how this year she was doing it right. We believed her because birthdays make idiots out of kids who know better.
Dad grilled in the backyard till dark. Aspen came over with Ashlynn. Jax pretended not to care. I kept checking the road anyway. She never came.
No call after. No explanation worth a damn when she did show up weeks later. Just that same selfish shrug like disappointment was something that happened to her instead of because of her.
That kind of thing tends to stick in weird places. It’s not always loud. It doesn’t always sit on the front of my chest where I can point at it. Most of the time it lives lower, quieter, like old glass under skin. Then a date on the calendar hits, or a child looks up at me with total trust, or a woman who should have stayed gone tries to sneak back in through the soft parts, and there it is all over again.
Maybe that’s why I need this day to stay ours now.
Not hers. Not the version she tells herself if she’s still out there polishing her lies till they look like regret. Ours.
Aspen comes back into the room and studies my face for half a second too long. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Boston.”
I blow out a breath and shift Ollie higher on my chest. “Just thinking.”
“That’s always dangerous.”
“Agreed.”
She comes close enough to kiss me quick, soft and knowing. “Then stop spiraling and go get dressed. We leave in forty-five.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
By the time we get to Dad and Ashlynn’s, the yard’s already half full. Lincoln’s unloading kids and gifts in one trip because he never learned moderation. Raleigh’s got one twin on her hip and the other in the stroller, looking tired and gorgeous and exactly like she’d fight anybody who made this day harder than it needed to be. Brooklyn’s carrying one of the boys while Jax hauls the diaper bag and acts like the whole world’s a security breach waiting to happen.
Dallas gets Sawyer out of his seat and swings him up onto his shoulder, and my nephew squeals like he’s been granted audience with a king. Home.
That’s what it feels like even before everybody’s fully inside the gate.
Dad comes around the side of the house with a bag of ice over one shoulder and one look at the state of me. “You remember how to smile on your own birthday, or you need coaching.”
“I’m smiling internally.”
“That’s not useful.”
Ashlynn takes Lydia from me before I can defend myself, kisses my cheek, then Aspen’s, and tells all five birthday people to get inside before the cakes melt while Miles sleeps in his carrier by the door and Boston bounces Ollie on one shoulder. It’s loud instantly. It always is. The kitchen’s packed with serving trays and kids’ cups. The den’s already covered in toys. Nora finds Maddison and disappears into a craft project before I can even tell her to take off her shoes.
The whole thing should make me feel overwhelmed. Instead it settles me. That’s the power of being loved by the right people. They don’t take weight off your life. They make it easier to carry.
For the first hour, the day does exactly what I need it to do. It stays ordinary in the best way. I hold babies. I refill drinks. I get roasted by my brothers over the stack of lists in my back pocket. Aspen laughs at me at least six times. Dad tells Sawyer he’s not big enough for root beer yet and gets personally insulted for it.
Then the front gate clicks. I know that sound because everybody does. It shouldn’t change the whole yard, but it does.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just immediate. Lincoln angles toward the kids without making a show of it. Dallas takes Sawyer from Cheyenne and hands him to Dad so fast it almost looks casual. Jax turns before I do, shoulders going hard. Even Aspen goes still beside the drinks table. Heather.
She’s in a pale blue dress with her hair done and a gift bag hanging off one wrist, like she really fixed herself up for this. Like that makes it less insulting. Behind her is some poor delivery guy wrestling a massive balloon arrangement through the gate, the kind with HAPPY BIRTHDAY floating in silver letters over a whole ridiculous spray of pastel.
For one split second I’m sixteen again, watching the road and hoping against my own good sense. Then I’m not.
Because my daughter is ten feet away. Because my wife is here. Because my brothers are already moving. Because the only thing that matters about the past now is whether I let it get close enough to touch the kids.
Jax gets there first. Of course he does. He plants himself in front of her before the balloons even clear the latch. “No.”
She puts on that careful, polished smile like she’s stepping into church instead of into consequences. “Jackson, please. I’m not here to fight.”
“Then you should’ve stayed gone.”
Her eyes flick past him toward the house, then the yard, then me. “Boston, sweetheart, happy birthday.” Sweetheart.
I haven’t been that to her in any way that means anything for years, and hearing it now makes my skin go cold.
I cross the yard slow, because moving too fast would make this about temper and she’d love that. She always loved turning the damage she caused into proof that somebody else had the real problem.
Aspen comes with me. She doesn’t touch me at first. She just stays there at my side, warm and steady, which somehow helps more.
“You need to leave,” I say.
Heather’s smile strains. “I brought balloons for the kids and gifts for the babies. I’m trying, Boston.”
“No,” I tell her. “You brought evidence that you still think money and timing matter more than history.”
“People can move forward if they stop punishing each other.”
That nearly makes me laugh, except nothing about her has ever been funny to me.
Behind her, the delivery guy holding the balloons is doing everything but vanish into mulch.
I look right at her and let her see that I’m not the boy from the porch anymore. “You know what the problem with that speech is. It only works if what happened was mutual. You didn’t get locked out. You left. You do not get to show up on our birthday, when the whole point of this day used to be hoping you’d do one damn thing right, and act like we’re cruel because we remember it clearly.”
She opens her mouth, probably for one of those lines about mistakes and growth and sobriety and whatever else she’s been polishing in the mirror.
I cut her off. “My kids don’t know you. They won’t know you because you brought balloons. They won’t know you because you found a florist. They won’t know you because you figured out the gate code or because you keep picking the days that hurt the most and calling that timing a coincidence.”
That lands. I can see it. Maybe because she expected softer. Maybe because she forgot I stopped waiting on her a long time ago. Maybe because the truth sounds different when a man says it with his daughter in the yard behind him and no fear left in it.
She tries one more turn anyway, because of course she does. “They’re my grandchildren too.”
“There it is,” Jax says flatly.
I don’t take my eyes off her. “No. They’re children you want access to. That is not the same thing.”
For a second nobody says anything. Then Dad steps up beside Dallas, Sawyer on his hip, and says in that low courtroom voice of his, “You’ve been told no. Don’t make this uglier than it already is.”
The delivery guy flinches like he’s reconsidering every career decision that led him here.
Heather’s face goes so tight it shows the bones under it. For one ugly beat, I think she’s going to push. Then she looks at the balloons, the gate, the whole yard of people who know exactly who she is, and finally seems to understand there isn’t a version of this where she wins.
She turns stiffly, says something clipped to the balloon guy, and heads back out. The balloons snag once on the gate, which feels like divine comedy, then disappear.
The second she’s gone, the whole yard exhales.
Aspen touches the center of my chest. “Breathe.”
“I am.”
“Not well.”
Fair. I drag a hand over my mouth and look toward the house, toward Nora laughing with Maddison at the patio table like nothing happened. Good. That’s exactly how it should stay.
Dallas claps a hand over the back of my neck once, hard and quick. Lincoln gives me one nod. Jax just looks at me like he’s checking whether I’m about to do something stupid. I’m not.
That’s the difference now too. The old anger in me used to feel like fire. Immediate. Destructive. A thing to swing. Now it feels cleaner than that. More like steel. More useful.
We go back to the party because that’s the win.
Not performing wound. Not giving her more oxygen. Not letting the whole yard tilt toward the ugliest person who tried to enter it.
At cake time, we line up all five birthday people because apparently my life’s gotten ridiculous enough that this counts as normal now. I’ve got Lydia tucked against my chest, Miles asleep in the carrier at my feet, and Aspen’s got Ollie while Lincoln balances one twin on his hip. Jax is holding one of his boys while Brooklyn wrangles Lily and the other baby nearby. Dallas stands with Sawyer in front of him and grins like the world is less ugly than it used to be. Maybe it is.
Nora insists we each need our own candle count and then gets furious when Dad explains fire codes and sanity. Aspen laughs so hard she nearly cries. Ashlynn tells everybody to hush long enough to sing. The babies take turns complaining. Someone gets frosting on the patio chair. Probably Sawyer. Definitely Sawyer.
And in the middle of all that noise, I get it clear enough to keep.
Birthdays never belonged to whoever showed up late carrying guilt and a shopping bag.
They belong to the people who were already in the house with you before the candles got lit.
Later, after most of the food’s gone and the string lights kick on over the yard, I find Nora by the side gate licking icing off her thumb.
“You have fun,” I ask.
She nods solemnly. “Best birfday ever.”
I crouch in front of her. “Even with all the people.”
“Especially with all the people.”
That does something to me I can’t really explain without sounding softer than my brothers would let me live down.
She touches my cheek with her sticky little hand. “Is your birthday my birthday too?”
I smile and smooth her hair back. “Part of it, yeah.”
“That’s nice.”
“It is.”
She blinks up at me. “I’m glad you’re my daddy.”
That one nearly floors me. I kiss her forehead and pull her into me for a second. “I’m glad you’re my girl.”
When I stand up again, Aspen’s across the yard holding Ollie and watching me with that look she gets when she sees straight through whatever I’m trying to pass off as fine, and Miles is asleep against her in the carrier while Lydia dozes in the stroller beside her chair.
Heather can keep telling herself stories about what she deserves.
This birthday isn’t built on waiting for her to show up and do one thing right.
It’s already full of the people who did.