Page 34 of Second Start: Family
Gramps and his lady friend, Pauline, had cupcakes for Bobby’s birthday when the kids visited them before the school year started.
“That’s okay, kids,” Dan said without looking at his sisters. “You can have your birthday cakes on my birthday — I’ll owe you.”
Lizzie brightened instantly. “A birthday cake swap. Okay. Thanks, Dan.”
He shrugged.
The same old disinterest, yet Hall felt neither anger nor bafflement at it in this moment. Dan had saved his bacon — and the girls’ birthdays. He’d put up with the bad attitude in exchange for that.
Hall reached around for the knife in readiness for the next step.
He’d let them cut, but be ready to step in and guide the knife. He could do that — a man who’d baked a cake for the first time, even if he did have a lot of help, could deal with two knife-wielding little girls.
But no one reached for the knife.
Instead, they all looked at him expectantly.
“What?”
“Now you sing,” Molly said as if he were younger than Bobby, and considerably less bright.
Oh, no…
“Listen, you don’t want me to sing—”
“Lizzie and I have to have our birthday song.” Molly gave him that what-planet-did-you-come-from-look. “Momma always sang to us.”
He remembered that. He remembered Annie’s light, clear voice singing “Happy Birthday.” And singing to them at night. She’d sing a lullaby to Bobby, and the house would go still with listening. Even him, working on the books at the desk with Dan behind him at the kitchen table doing his homework. He’d pause, and feel the music like permission to relax the tight roll across the back of his neck.
There’d been no lullabies since the night before she died.
He hadn’t realized that until this moment.
Bobby tugged on his sleeve.
When he looked down, his youngest put his hand up in front of his mouth as if to tell a secret, then said in a stage whisper that would have done Broadway proud, “It startsHappy Birthday to you.”
Bobby clearly thought not knowing the words had Hall hesitating. He couldn’t tell them the cause of his distraction. As for his reluctance … Oh, hell, so what if he’d never been much of a singer. It wasn’t like the girls wanted an opera.
“Thanks, Bobby.” He nodded solemnly to his youngest, then faced Molly and Lizzie, and began.
To his ears, the first two notes sounded like a steer caught in barbed wire. But it got better. Lizzie’s face scrunched up a little, and the others were staring, but by the time he got to the second “birthday” he thought he was on a roll.
Until Bobby clapped his hands over his ears. “No sing! No more sing!”
Lizzie sucked in a breath, then giggled. A second giggle, from Molly, stopped him mid-note — or what passed for a note when he tried to sing.
Bobby looked around at him cautiously. When he saw that Hall’s mouth was closed, he slowly removed his hands from his ears.
“I told you, you didn’t want me to sing,” he said in a faked put-upon voice.
The girls’ giggles intensified, Lizzie’s hands went to her cheeks as she bent nearly double. Bobby caught the bug and erupted into his startlingly deep “Ho ho ho” laugh, and Hall heard a sound from Dan, too, though he was careful not to look in that direction because that would surely end his eldest’s amusement. The first of Hall’s own chuckles caught him by surprise, but he quickly relaxed into them.
Had he ever before laughed like this with his kids, just him and the kids? If he had, he didn’t recall it. And maybe that was the same thing as it never happening.
“But Lizzie has to have her birthday song,” insisted Molly, that frown tucking back between her brows.
“No more Daddy sing,” proclaimed Bobby. “Dan sing.”
