She nodded.
I walked to the counter. I ordered my coffee and bought two vanilla cupcakes with pink frosting.
The kind that looks almost too pretty to eat.
When I placed them on the table, her eyes widened.
She smiled through tears. God, that smile could’ve powered the whole city.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Then she pointed outside again.
“He works extra on her birthday,” she said quietly.
“He says Mom wouldn’t want us to give up.”
This man could’ve crumbled under the weight of loss and poverty and single parenthood, but instead, he chose to keep going. For her. On the hardest day of the year.
