Then Marcus crouched beside his daughter.
He couldn't promise things he didn't know.
But he could tell her what he believed.
“I think Mommy would want us to remember her when we celebrate.”
The little girl considered that.
Then asked, “Can we still have cake?”
Marcus felt tears gathering.
He remembered his wife's voice.
She still needs birthday cakes.
He smiled.
“Of course.”
His daughter grinned.
“Pink cake?”
“The pinkest cake you've ever seen.”
She laughed.
And Marcus felt something inside him begin to loosen.
He had spent months afraid that enjoying life again would somehow mean loving his wife less.
But watching their daughter smile taught him something different.
Happiness wasn't a betrayal.
It was one of the things his wife had asked him to protect.
From that day forward, birthdays became sacred.
Not because Marcus could afford extravagant celebrations.
He couldn't always.
But because each birthday represented another year of his daughter's life and another chance to create memories that contained more than grief.
For her fifth birthday, he decorated the living room with pink streamers and baked a cake that leaned so badly his daughter called it a pink mountain.
For her sixth, he organized a backyard treasure hunt with plastic crowns and tiny wrapped gifts.
The children laughed.
Marcus wore a ridiculous paper crown.
His mother took photographs.
And when the birthday girl asked him to dance, he did.
Right there on the grass.
Broad shoulders.
Gray T-shirt.
And all.
His daughter laughed so hard she fell onto a picnic blanket.
Marcus laughed with her.
That night, after everyone left, he stood in the kitchen looking at a photograph of his late wife.
“I remembered,” he whispered.
Then he looked toward the empty cake plate.
“I remembered to make room for joy.”
When his daughter's seventh birthday approached, he decided to make it special.
Not expensive.
Special.
She wanted a princess party.
Pink balloons.
A castle-shaped cake.
A treasure hunt.
And a table where her friends could decorate paper crowns.
She also wanted her grandmother to make the strawberry lemonade she'd loved since she was little.
Marcus agreed to everything.
Almost.
When she asked for an actual pony, he laughed.