Page 130 of A Matter of Time

“Uh-huh.” I smiled slowly. “You think maybe you’re overanalyzing this a little?”

He cleared his throat.

I waited, and when he remained silent, I was going to just start talking about something, anything, some random topic, but as I opened my mouth, he began.

“Before my parents passed, my mother ordered a cake for my birthday. Eighteen was huge, and the party she had planned was going to be a spectacle. The news that the plane had gone down came the same day they delivered the cake, and I guess our housekeeper just shoved it in the refrigerator without thinking.”

He never talked about his parents, so I was silent, making sure I didn’t disturb him.

“I found it in there the day after the funeral, this huge Superman cake. What possessed her to order it I will never know, but it was there, taking up an entire shelf with ‘Happy birthday to our superhero’ on it, or something to that effect.” He was silent for a few minutes, just watching the road. “And I knew she would have gotten the biggest kick out of watching me blow out candles and do the Superman pose and everything else, so I took it out and cut a slice.”

I couldn’t imagine how much Dane missed his parents. There had just been the three of them and his grandmother. She had passed two years before his folks, and they had died aboard a private plane on their way home from one of his father’s many business trips. His mother didn’t usually go with him, but the meeting had been in San Francisco, and she loved the city by the bay.

“The cake was really good, I remember, but there was so much of it. If I’d had my party… But it was a full sheet and I was just one person. I swear it lasted forever. Every night for dessert—I had it. My friends came by, my dad’s business associates, people I didn’t know. I offered everybody cake, and they probably thought how weird it was that I had this cheesy little kid’s cake, but nobody said anything about it.”

I stared at his profile and waited.

“I remember there was still half of it left, and I tried to give some to Jude to take home. He said he hated leftovers, and I realized that that was all it was—something left over. I had made a big deal out of something I’m sure my mother would have tossed out the next morning, if not the night of the party. She always wanted me to live in the moment, to be present… the cake lying in the fridge day after day would have annoyed the hell out of her.”

I nodded as he turned to smile at me.

“I pitched it the next day.”

“And so, what? Now you don’t believe in leftovers on some spiritual level?”

“I just don’t like them at all.”

“So that’s why I couldn’t take any from Mrs. Ward?”

“Yes.”

“Spoken like someone who never had to make one meal stretch into two or three. When you grow up poor, leftovers are part of survival.”

“I hate them. I never want to see something twice. You can have too much of a good thing.”

I shook my head. “You’re disturbed.”

“Obviously.”

“Are you going to send Sabine some flowers and a card to apologize?”

He rolled his eyes like I was stupid. “Sure. Find me a card for ‘I’m sorry I forgot you.’”

I chuckled. “Seriously…maybe you should take a break, huh, player?”

“Shut up.”

I sat there, smiling out the window.

“You’re saying you have no weird thing from your childhood that makes no logical sense?”

“No, I won’t say that.”

“Tell me.”

I shrugged. “Garbage bags.”

“I’m sorry?”