"I don't celebrate birthdays."
"I'm aware of what you think you do and don't do." She waves a hand dismissively. "I'm telling you what's happening."
"Lily."
"I'll plan the whole thing. You don't have to do anything. Just show up and be old and handsome and let people love you for one evening."
"I don't want a party."
"Who said party? I said celebrate. Dinner. Cake. The people who matter. That's it. Low key. Callahan-approved levels of low key."
She's so sure about it. So certain that birthdays are things you can just decide to fix by throwing enough warmth at them.
She doesn't know. She doesn't know why February is heavy every year, pressing down harder the closer we get to the middle of the month. I haven't told her because I haven't told anyone who didn't already know, and the people who already know have learned not to bring it up.
"I'm even willing to sacrifice my own birthday," she continues, holding up a hand like she's taking an oath. "To make your big thirty all about you. Completely selfless. I'm basically a saint."
I frown. "When's your birthday?"
"February sixteenth." She grins at me, kicking her legs, looking like she's just handed me a gift. "The day after yours. We're practically twins. Except I'll be twenty-three, which is significantly younger and more attractive."
February sixteenth is not just a date on a calendar. February sixteenth is the morning I walked into my parents' bedroom and found my mother's body still warm, but already still, in a bed she would never get out of again.
Something must change in my face because Lily's grinfalters. She's off the filing cabinet and in front of me before I can rearrange my expression into something less telling.
"What's wrong?" Her hands grip my arms, her face tilted up, searching. "Callahan. What did I say?"
I meet her eyes, this woman who shares a birthday with the worst day of my life and has no idea. Who walked into this office buzzing with plans and cakes and celebrations and accidentally placed herself on the exact date I spend every year trying to forget.
"My mom died on February sixteenth," I tell her.
Her face changes in stages — confusion first, then understanding, then the particular pain that comes from hurting someone you love without meaning to.
"Callahan." Her voice is so soft. "Tell me."
"She threw me a party for my eighteenth." The words start coming before I've decided to say them, pulled out of me by the way she's standing there, listening with her whole body.
"She'd been planning it for weeks. The house, the decorations, all of it. She was like that about birthdays. Every year, no matter what, she made it an event. Even when I was too old for it. Even when my friends didn't do house parties anymore."
She doesn't interrupt, just holds on and waits.
"I let her do it because she loved it. She baked the cake herself and made my dad hang streamers and she danced with me in the living room in front of everyone. And I didn't care that my friends were watching because she was happy. She said she couldn't believe her only baby was a man." My voice catches on the memory. "Kept saying it, and I rolled my eyes every time."
Her eyes are filling now, but she doesn't blink. She just lets them fill and keeps her hands on me and keeps listening.
"The next morning she didn't come down. She was always up first. Every day of my life, my mother was the first person awake in that house, coffee on before anyone stirred."
I push through the tightness in my throat. "I asked Dad and he said she was tired from the party. He'd gone in early that morning and kissed her forehead and come downstairs and started his day."
The fluorescent light buzzes overhead. Somewhere downstairs, a door opens and closes.
"She didn't stir when he kissed her. He thought she was sleeping." My gaze drops to the floor between us because I can't look at her face while I say the rest. "By ten I went to check on her. It wasn't like her. Even tired, she never slept past eight."
Lily's fingers dig into my arms.
"She wasn't sleeping. She was dead. Aneurysm, they said. No warning, no symptoms, nothing. She went to bed after my birthday party and she didn't wake up. And my dad and I had been walking around the house for hours that morning, eating breakfast, talking, living, while she lay there dead."
Her tears spill over, both sides at once, rolling down her cheeks. She doesn't wipe them, doesn't look away. I reach up and brush them from her face, but new ones keep coming.
