Birthdays at 97 are quiet things. No fanfare, no fuss—just me, my window, and the sound of buses rumbling past. This year, I decided to do something different. I bought myself a cake.
The bakery girl smiled when I told her it was my birthday. “Happy birthday,” she said, the words automatic. I asked her to write Happy 97th, Mr. L in frosting, feeling oddly shy about it.
Back in my room, I lit a candle and sat alone. I knew better than to expect a call from Eliot. We hadn’t spoken since an argument years ago, and I’d long accepted that some bridges stay burned. Still, I snapped a photo of the cake and texted it to his old number. Happy birthday to me.
Nothing.
I ate a slice, then another, watching the street below. The cake was good, even if no one was there to share it.
Then—a knock.
A girl stood at my door, maybe 15, with curly hair and a hesitant smile. “I’m Soraya,” she said. “Your granddaughter.”
My hands shook. She showed me my text—Eliot had given her his old phone, and she’d found it buried in the inbox. “Dad told me not to answer,” she confessed. “But I wanted to.”
She handed me a card, decorated with marker hearts. Happy Birthday, Grandpa.
We sat on my bed, eating cake and talking. She told me about school, her art, how she’d always wondered about me. I told her about her father’s childhood—his obsession with dinosaurs, his terrible singing voice. Before she left, she took our picture. “I’ll come back,” she promised.
Later, a text appeared: Thank you for being kind to her. —E.
No explanations. No promises. Just a thread, thin but unbroken.
Maybe that’s all we get. Maybe that’s enough.
