Which was true, and which left out the part that would have cut her, and that was the most careful sentence I have ever built.

Marcus stopped smiling.

He crossed the room and took the crown off the ice bag where he had perched it for a joke, and he crouched down and handed it back to her the right way, settling it, and he said, your crown belongs on your head.

She put it back on.

And then, because a birthday does not stop for a broken promise, because the other children were already in the yard and the cake was already on the table, we had the party.

She blew out all eight candles in one breath and everyone clapped and she laughed and asked for the slice with the purple frosting flower, and for whole minutes at a time it was simply a good day.