not to convey the sweet pain in her heart at the thought of it, nor of all the birthdays he’d missed since leaving home at eleven, nor of the fact that no one had made her a birthday cake in all her life, at least not that she could recall. “What kind of icing?” she asked. That quick grin again. “Chocolate. Spread on the layers warm.” The words themselves, staccato at first and then drawn out in his gentle accent, sounded like poetry, to Cecily.
