On my sixty-sixth birthday, I didn’t host a party.

I took the train to Chicago and walked through the old industrial neighborhood where I’d grown up. The apartment building from my childhood was gone, replaced by a warehouse with mirrored windows.

The corner grocery had become a coffee shop. I stood on the sidewalk for a long time, remembering the boy who’d promised himself his family would never know poverty.

That boy kept his promise too well.

That evening, I returned to the penthouse and found a small package waiting from Valerie. Inside was a simple vanilla cake from a bakery she insisted was “not sentimental, just excellent.”

There was a single candle in the box.