Most of the people she knew well enough to talk with in those days with Eddie didn’t celebrate birthdays. Getting roaring drunk or impossibly high, blacking out to forget the past and avoid thinking about the future seemed to be the point of the birthday celebrations at Eddie’s club. They didn’t have cake. The crowd gathered at Franny’s diner was slightly more sober. Tables were missing from the back half of the diner near the jukebox, so there was probably supposed to be dancing. More mystifying than the why and how of birthday celebrations was the fact that so many were crowded in here to celebrate hers. Twenty-six candles. Allie wondered how close that was to being accurate as she watched Franny light them. If Eddie knew anything about her origins he’d never mentioned them beyond that her mother dropped her on him with no details. She had never felt so awkward as she did when they sang happy birthday, the sting of a blush heated her cheeks. “Well, make a wish and blow out the candles,”
