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MAPLEWOOD BAKERY HAD KNOWN ADRIAN LONGER THAN I HAD

The owner, Mrs. Palmer, had been selling him chocolate ganache cake since he was nineteen.

When I walked in that afternoon, she already had the box ready.

“Firefighter birthday?”

“Unfortunately.”

She laughed.

“Still pretending he doesn’t like birthdays?”

“Still terrible at pretending.”

She tied white string around the box.

Then handed me a small paper bag.

“What’s this?”

“Two cinnamon twists.”

“I didn’t order those.”

“One for you.”

“And the other?”

She smiled.

“For whichever firefighter steals it first.”

I drove toward Station 7 feeling absurdly cheerful.

Balloons filled half my rearview mirror.

The cake sat buckled into the passenger seat because I had learned from previous experience that cake slides during hard turns.

Everything looked normal.

Bellmere traffic.

School buses.

People leaving grocery stores.

A dog sticking its head through a pickup truck window.

Nothing warned me.

That bothered me later.

The world should look different when yours is about to tilt.

It doesn’t.