Chapter Fifty

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VIENNA'S POV 

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!"  

     There was a chorus of clapping and hoots of hollering as the lemon-haired boy – my step-brother – blew out his eight candles on his colorful cake and grinned into a camera flash with one missing tooth. I was standing on one side of their small dining room with Elliot, and my dad was across the room. I was surprised that not many other kids turned up at Rudy's birthday party. I looked across the small dinner table at my dad, who was clapping and looking at Rudy proudly. I remember that look vividly; it was always present at all my birthday parties since forever, and I missed it a lot more than I would admit.

    "Happy birthday, Rudy," Elliot said beside me, shooting him a thumbs up, and Rudy beamed brightly.

   "Happy birthday," I chimed in, but Rudy's attention veered away from me and onto a woman who walked in with a small box covered in birthday wrapping and slapped with a big, red bow on top. Her dirty-blonde hair was chopped short to her neck and she wore a modest blue shirt displaying her love for the Cowboys.

    I watched, trying to stomach the view of my dad slinging an arm around her and kissing her cheek like the world was ending. My lip curled. I learned that her name was Eva, pronounced just like the Disney robot. She didn't wear any other piece of jewelry but a simple silver bracelet, and her home wasn't as spotless as Angie's, and she didn't order wedding bell-shaped glass containers filled with caviar, but she was normal, and I was more than relieved.

    "Happy birthday, baby," Eva exclaimed, thrusting the gift to her son. "It's from your dad and I, we know you've been wanting to play forever, and tryouts for the YMCA team are starting this spring!"

    Rudy tore apart the wrapping, paper shooting into the air and the bow flying on the floor. He opened the gift to find a brand-new football twice the size of his blonde head.

     "Aw, man, this is the best birthday ever!" he shouted, raising the football. Instantly he jumped up and hugged his parents. "Elliot, wanna come and play outside with me?"

    Instantly I glanced at him beside me. Elliot looked at me, "Ten minutes?"

   "Knock yourself out," I smiled, and he bent down and kissed my cheek before leaving with Rudy through the backdoor. I tried not to grin too hard. My dad was right there with a clear view.

   "Grab a jacket!" Eva called, but they were already gone, tossing each other the football in the leaf-strewn backyard. The clouds were darkening though, but they didn't care. I watched through the window at Elliot, who pulled up his sleeves to his elbow, his muscles tightening, and was showing my step-brother how to throw a football and where to put his hands.

It was a strange thing to see my dad's stuff all cluttered and littered in his modest house. When my dad left, so did his stuff, and there's been an empty spot in the house ever since. It was even stranger when they were all in the same relative places, like his boat shoes propped up by the door, or his worn jacket on the foreign coat rack, weathered to a faint mustard yellow color for wearing it so long, or his leather driving gloves on the coffee table full of water rings. I had that familiarity to lean on, at least, when he showed me Eva, his new wife.

"It's Evangeline, but please, call me Eva," she had told me when I walked in, instantly wanting to shake my hand. They were extremely soft and kind of sweaty. "It's with the long E by the way. Not like egg, more like email. Like that Disney robot, but not the boxy one."

       I pried my view away from the windows to see my dad chuckling at Eva while she plucked out the candles as he started slicing the cake. His eyebrows crinkled at the same places they always have. I guess I just thought that when my dad switched families, he would be different in the way he talked, the way he acted, the way he saw me. But the only difference was in the way he would smile a lot bigger and laugh a lot harder.

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