That night after dinner, we read the cards and open the gifts the kids have bought for me—I know the store wrapped the gifts, not Daniel—and then William and Jessica struggle to place forty candles on the small cake I bought.

“We don’t need to put all forty candles on,” I protest laughingly as the striped candles crowd the pink frosting, tipping this way and that. “We only need a few. The candles are symbolic more than anything.”

“But Mom, you’re forty,” William answers, counting the candles once more to make sure they’ve got them all.

Finally, cake blazing, we turn off the dining room light. The kids’ eyes shine as they sing; their faces glow golden in the candlelight. Love is such a strange thing, grabs you and doesn’t let go. Listening to my kids sing “Happy Birthday” to me, I don’t think I have ever loved them as much as I do right now. Blond Jessica with her gap between her bottom teeth and William with his handsome face and serious hazel eyes.

They reach the end of the song, and I blow out all the candles before the cake can catch fire.

Dining room light back on, I cut the cake, making sure Jessica and William both have good pieces while I take the first piece I cut, the piece that comes out messy and broken. It’s so second nature to take the piece that isn’t pretty, that doesn’t have all the icing, that I don’t even think twice until I take a bite. And then suddenly I look at the beautiful cake and then down at my plate with the mashed top layer and the naked bottom layer, and I don’t want this piece. I want a pretty piece. It’s my birthday cake. My fortieth birthday cake. Can’t I have a good piece on my own birthday?

I cut another slice of cake, this one with a rose, and put it on the plate with all the candles.

“What are you doing?” Jessica asks.

“Getting a better piece of cake,” I answer, licking off the frosting on the knife.

“But you had a piece.”

“I know, but it’s my birthday and I want a rose, too.”

Jessica glares at me. “You’re supposed to save the roses for us.”

I cut into my cake, take a big bite. “Says who?”

And Jessica just looks at me, mouth gaping. I smile around my mouthful of moist cake and gooey icing. I think I’m going to like being forty.

In the morning after the kids have left for school, I go to my desk and check my e-mail and then my voice mail. I’m hoping to find a message from Kai. I want him to call.