The Missing Birthday

The crunch of tires on the gravel driveway shattered the standoff. Julian was here.

Elena didn't wait to see if Arthur would point again or if his heart would finally give out. She grabbed the baby monitor and the tote bag containing the shoebox and ran. She couldn't go back to the guest room; it was the first place Julian would look after the study. She needed a place that smelled of oil and neglect, a place Julian’s Italian loafers wouldn't want to tread.

The garage.

She sprinted through the kitchen, out the side door, and across the breezeway. The evening air was cold, biting through her thin sweater. She slipped into the detached garage and pressed the button to close the heavy bay door, plunging herself into a darkness smelling of gasoline and dust.

She didn't turn on the lights. She used the flashlight on her phone, the beam cutting through the suspended motes of dust.

The garage was just as hoarded as the house. Stacks of *National Geographic* magazines, rusted lawn equipment, boxes of holiday decorations that hadn't seen the light of December in a decade. And in the center, shrouded under a gray tarp like a sleeping beast, was the Honda.

Her sixteenth birthday present.

Elena moved toward it, drawn by a gravity she couldn't resist. She pulled the tarp back. The red paint was dull, covered in a film of grime, but the car was pristine. Arthur had stopped letting her drive it when she went to college, claiming he was "keeping it safe" for her. He had kept it safe, alright. Safe from life. Safe from her.

She sat on the concrete floor, her back against the tire, and opened the tote bag. She needed to check the dates again. The gaps in the timeline were wounds, and she needed to know how deep they went.

She pulled out the stack from 1997. January. February. March.

She flipped to April.

Nothing.

There was a letter from May 4th. A letter from March 28th. But nothing for April. Nothing for her birthday.

Elena closed her eyes. She could hear Arthur’s voice, smooth and rich like expensive bourbon. *I got you something special, Elena. Since your mother couldn't be bothered to even send a card.*

He had walked her out to this garage. He had put a giant white bow on the hood. He had handed her the keys and hugged her while she cried into his shoulder, mourning a mother she thought had forgotten her.

*She didn't forget.*

The realization made Elena nauseous. Meredith hadn't forgotten. Arthur had stolen the letter. But where was it? It wasn't in the shoebox.

She looked at the car.

Arthur was a creature of sentimental cruelty. He liked to keep his trophies near the site of the victory. He had hidden the receipts in the pantry where the silver was kept. He had hidden the letters in the room he forbade her to enter.

What if he had hidden the birthday letter *with* the birthday present?

Elena scrambled up. She tried the door handle. Unlocked. She slid into the driver's seat. The smell of old upholstery and stale air enveloped her. It smelled like being sixteen and trapped.

She opened the glove compartment.

A tire gauge. A map of New England. And the leather-bound owner's manual.

Elena pulled the manual out. It felt thick. Too thick.

She opened the cover.

Stuffed into the pocket meant for the registration was a square envelope. It was pink. Not the white prison stationery. A store-bought card.

Elena pulled it out. Her name was written on the front in Meredith’s handwriting, the ink slightly smeared as if the writer had been rushing.

But it was the flap that made Elena’s breath catch in her throat.

Every other letter in the shoebox had been sealed. Intact. Unread by Arthur, merely collected.

But this one was different. The flap was torn. The paper was jagged.

Arthur hadn't just stolen this one. He had opened it. He had read her mother’s words, violated the privacy of a mother reaching out to her child on her sixteenth birthday, and then he had tucked it into the glove box of the car he bought to replace her.

Elena’s hands shook as she slid the card out.

She found the envelope tucked inside the car's original manual. It had been opened.