Chapter 9 - The Tenth Star
On a Saturday in early October, the air in Richmond was crisp, dry, and clean, carrying the sharp scent of fallen oak leaves and woodsmoke from the chimney pots along the avenue.
It was Emma’s eleventh birthday.
The dining room of the Monument Avenue house was filled with twelve people: Chloe, Maya, five new friends from her cello ensemble, my sister Clara who had driven down from Charlottesville, and Rachel Coleman, who had become a permanent, fierce presence in our family life.
The mahogany table was covered in platters of wood-fired pizzas, bowls of fresh blackberries, and crystal pitchers of sparkling apple cider.
In the center of the table sat the cake.
It was not from a bakery. It was a three-tier dark chocolate fudge cake, filled with raspberry coulis, frosted in midnight-blue Swiss buttercream that looked like a slice of the evening sky.
Across the top rim, perched on delicate spun-sugar pedestals, were eleven golden stars.
Emma stood beside the table, wearing a dark green velvet dress, her cello resting in its hard case by the grand piano in the corner. She had grown two inches over the year; her shoulders were straight, her posture confident, her hazel eyes bright with the unclouded, sovereign joy of a girl who knew she was loved without conditions.
Lily stood beside her, holding a wooden matchbox, her small face solemn with the responsibility of the lighting ceremony.
One by one, Emma and Lily lit the eleven stars.
The little flames flickered in the dusk, casting a warm, golden glow across the faces of the children gathered around the table.
“Make a wish, Emma!” Chloe shouted, laughing, clapping her hands.
“Make it about the solo at the Kennedy Center!” Maya added.
Emma looked at the cake.
Then, her eyes moved across the table, finding mine.
She didn't look like a girl who had once stood in a dining room listening to her grandmother tell her she was worthless. She looked like an empress standing in her own hall.
She reached out her hand, caught my fingers, and pulled me close until my shoulder was touching hers.
“Mom,” she whispered, leaning into my ear, her breath warm against my cheek. “Do you remember what you asked me last year? At the hotel?”
“I remember every second, baby,” I whispered back.
“I don't have to wish for my voice anymore,” Emma said, her smile wide, radiant, and whole. “I have it.”
She took a deep, effortless breath that filled her lungs to the bottom ribs.
She blew.
A single, clean wave of air passed across the midnight-blue frosting.
All eleven stars went out at once.
The room erupted into cheers, laughter, and clapping that rattled the crystal pendants of the chandelier above our heads.
Lily reached out her small finger, swiped a massive glob of chocolate buttercream from the bottom scrollwork, shoved it straight into her mouth, and grinned, her cheeks smeared with brown sugar.
Nobody yelled.
May you like
Nobody smashed a pedestal.
I took the cake knife—a simple, sharp steel blade with a wooden handle that my father had used to carve roasts on Sunday afternoons—and sliced deeply into the cake, cutting twelve thick, generous wedges for the children who had come to celebrate.
