The Lost Birthday Party
"Huh? What's this about you?"
"Hey there."
After dropping Reni off at kindergarten and heading into work, Greg raised a hand in greeting.
"Aboo!"
Maybe because it had been a while, Luca actually reacted.
"Oh, Luca. Did this uncle miss you?"
Greg lit up, rising from his seat and spreading both arms wide toward Luca.
Whoosh.
But Luca wasn't quite that happy to see him—he simply turned his head away.
"Aw, you cold little baby. That's just too much."
Greg laughed out loud and sank right back into his chair.
His face looked happy, yet faintly worn out—exactly the face of a parent with a newborn at home.
I settled Luca into the playroom and headed for the kitchen.
"Why are you already in? I told you to rest as much as you need."
As I started the coffee, Cassandra walked over with her own mug and answered for him.
"Knowing your personality, you wouldn't dock his pay, so Rachel told him to hurry up and get back to work."
Rachel, honestly. I couldn't tell if she was just diligent or completely inflexible.
"Don't even start. This morning she was begging for her laptop and I barely managed to stop her before I left."
Greg brought his own mug over and held it out as he added that. Looking closer, he even had faint dark circles under his eyes.
"Really? Good job. But if you leave the house, won't she just dig it out and use it anyway?"
"That's what I figured, so I brought it with me."
Greg jerked his chin toward his desk. Rachel's silver laptop sat squarely on top of it.
Thorough in a way that wasn't very Greg-like.
I poured the steaming coffee and asked,
"Even so, is it really okay for you to be out like this?"
Greg flopped forward onto the island table as he answered.
"Yeah. My sisters and the aunts all went home, but both my mom and Rachel's mom are still there."
"And yet the new dad still looks exhausted."
Cassandra said it with a smile, and Greg laughed in a soft huff.
"Our little princess just won't sleep at night……"
Right. After about a week of barely sleeping, even Greg had no choice.
"……"
Looking at him quietly, Greg seemed to have matured a little in just a few days. So the kid was finally growing up.
"……What."
Sensing something unsettled in my gaze, Greg challenged me, but I just smiled and shook my head.
"Nothing. It's nothing. Come on, show me some pictures of the princess."
"Ah, should I?"
As if he'd been waiting for me to say exactly that, Greg pulled out his phone—then suddenly shot upright.
He hurried over with a tablet so he could show the photos on a bigger screen.
"Oh my goodness, she's beautiful."
"Right? I had to snap these the second she stopped crying for a second. Hey, what's with that look on your face?"
Greg asked, puzzled, watching me fight back a laugh that kept trying to burst out.
"No…… Even if I saw her from a train window going by, I'd know she's your daughter."
"Huh? She looks that much like me?"
That much. If Greg had been born a girl, she probably would've looked exactly like that.
Otis, the one who used to mouth off about how the kid couldn't possibly be his, really should have seen these pictures.
Greg must have thought the same thing, because he snickered.
"Ah, but once the baby was about three days old, I started thinking she looked a ton like my sister."
I nodded and quietly watched the photos Greg slowly flipped through.
The little family in the pictures looked truly happy.
A baby nestled in Mom's arms. A baby nestled in Dad's arms. A baby with a big ribbon in her hair, asleep between Mom and Dad.
The small, precious baby with the lovely name Sabrina, wrapped in her parents' complete love, was indescribably beautiful.
"……This reminds me of when I first met Luca."
"Yeah. Luca was so tiny back then too."
Greg took a sip of coffee and looked at me as if freshly struck by the memory.
"How the hell did you raise a kid all by yourself?"
At those words I thought back for a moment to last winter.
"I don't know. But Luca didn't cry much, I think. He slept well at night too……"
On top of that, even while I was out working and dragging him everywhere with me, he never once got seriously sick.
Come to think of it, our Luca had been out and about a lot since he was only a month old.
"……I don't feel like I did much of anything. The kid just grew up on his own."
"Put your hand on your heart and ask yourself again. Really nothing?"
"It's just a figure of speech."
As I said it, I leaned out over the counter and peered through the open playroom doorway.
Sensing my gaze, Luca turned his head.
Then he grinned.
A second later he whipped his head back around and focused on the toy he'd been playing with.
"……"
How was I supposed to describe this ambiguous feeling that wasn't quite loneliness and wasn't quite sulking?
Carrying that subtle emotion, I rummaged through the kitchen for some simple snack.
"What are you looking for all of a sudden?"
"Bait."
"Ah, if that's the case, how about this?"
Of course it was Cassandra.
She understood my half-baked answer perfectly and pulled out a bag of rolls she'd brought from home.
"Dimitri packed these for the office folks. He sent butter and jam too—want to eat some with us?"
Holding a small, appetizing roll, I stepped out past the counter, knelt down, and called to Luca.
"Luca."
The baby turned his head and looked at me.
When I wiggled the bread left and right, Luca broke into a little smile.
He quickly tossed the toy aside and scrambled on all fours toward his baby walker.
Then he pushed the walker hard and toddled toward me with determined little steps.
"That's it, Luca! Go for the bread!"
Greg cheered him on as he walked, and Cassandra captured every second of Luca's journey toward the bread on camera.
"Mwah."
Once he got close, Luca gave the walker a little shove to the side.
He took a couple of steps on his own, tumbled right into my arms, then reached out and claimed the bread.
"Aww, that's my baby."
I scooped the proud little guy up and covered him in kisses. By then Luca had zero interest in Dad—all his attention was locked on the bread.
"When did he get this big?"
I sat down and patted his back.
Seeing Sabrina, born into love and blessing from her parents, made me feel strangely tender, and I kept stroking him.
"Doesn't Luca seem like he's developing a little fast, though?"
"Yes. And he's sturdy too. Every month when we go to the hospital, the doctor praises how healthy he is."
"That's real luck. I hope our Sabrina grows up just as healthy as Luca."
"Yeah……"
"Jun, why the sad face?"
"When I think about the past, I feel so sorry toward Luca."
I slowly began to tell them.
About that freezing winter, when I was working part-time at the old apartment management office and wheeled Luca around in the stroller.
"And yet he never once got seriously sick, so I don't know whether to be grateful or sorry."
But Cassandra's eyes lit up and she said something unexpected.
"Maybe raising him a little cold is exactly why he's healthy. I don't remember when, but I once read an article that Northern Europeans just put their kids outside to sleep."
"What…… That can't be right. Isn't that fake news?"
"I'm serious!"
Cassandra immediately snatched the tablet from Greg and started searching.
I couldn't help but be surprised when I saw the article she pulled up.
It really did say they put babies in strollers outside to sleep even at fifteen degrees below zero.
"It's not even some new health trend—it's tradition. Tradition."
The article said they believed frequent exposure to fresh air helped children grow healthier.
Still, no matter how I looked at it, I couldn't quite believe it.
Greg also stared solemnly at the photos of babies sleeping on snow-covered streets.
"I am never putting our princess outside to sleep……"
Cassandra laughed and gave Greg a light shove on the shoulder. Then she looked at me and said,
"Parents can't help how they feel, but still—Jun, you've raised Luca really well this past year. And Reni too, of course."
"That's true. Now that I'm a newborn dad myself, I sincerely respect you. Starting to raise a kid alone, bringing Reni home—my whole family is helping with childcare and it's still hard."
I smiled a little. I hoped our baby felt the same way.
In the meantime Luca had neatly polished off every last bite of the roll.
When I put a water bottle in his small hands, he slurped it down eagerly through the straw and finished snack time with an adorable little burp.
When Reni came back from kindergarten and saw the photos of Sabrina that Greg showed him, he bounced up and down in place.
"When is she coming? When does the baby come to work?"
"Hmm……"
Greg smiled a little awkwardly and stroked the excited child's hair.
"Sorry, Reni. Sabrina's still a baby, so she can't come to work. She can't even move properly yet."
"But Luca's a baby too. Luca can play a lot!"
As expected, Reni—who understood perfectly that what he did at "work" was play—pointed at Luca as he answered.
"But even Luca couldn't crawl at first, remember?"
"Hmm…… Ah, right. He couldn't?"
Reni looked up at the ceiling as if recalling something from very long ago.
"That's right. But our Reni taught him by saying 'It's your knees!' and then he crawled really well."
Reni covered his mouth with both hands and giggled as if he remembered everything now.
"Then I can just teach her too. Mm, the baby."
He clearly wanted to see the baby soon, and Reni's wheedling began. But some things simply couldn't be helped.
"Sabrina still has to grow a lot even to crawl."
Reni still looked disappointed. He made a serious "mmmm" sound and put on a thinking face.
No matter what, you can't speed up a baby's growth, sweetheart.
When I patted his back, Reni finally seemed to accept it and muttered in a dejected little voice,
"Luca did it so fast……"
The child was downcast, but the adults couldn't help smiling.
"Luca's already been alive almost a whole year. He's lived twelve whole months."
"Twelve months?"
"Yeah. But Sabrina hasn't even lived one month yet, so it's still hard."
"I see……"
Reni let out a big sigh with a face that said it couldn't be helped. In that case, I should give him something fun to look forward to.
"Luca's birthday is coming up soon, so Reni, let's plan a birthday party for Luca with Dad."
Reni tilted his head.
"Birthday party?"
"Yeah."
The child blinked slowly, as if carefully thinking about something from a very long time ago.
Then he suddenly went "Ah!" and smiled.
"I know! You put candles on the cake and go whoosh! You blow them out. Make a wish! and whoosh!"
"That's right."
But something felt a little off. Reni was speaking as if he had never had a birthday party himself.
And as if he had read my mind, Reni said,
"But why don't I have birthday parties?"
Everyone except Luca froze.
There was no way Alicia and Kyle wouldn't have celebrated the child's birthday.
Which meant that, timing-wise, Kyle had probably passed away right before Reni's fourth birthday.
And the birthdays before that—Reni simply didn't remember them.
I still couldn't find an answer when Reni tilted his head again and mumbled,
"……Or did I? Did I have a birthday party? Hmm, I don't remember."