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A whole year.
She’d had her little Lucky Star for an entire year.
Eventide— Momma McCoy, now, according to the trucks at her new yard, not even a decade her junior, but could she blame them? — Kissed the crown of his head. So many curls now— he’d had wisps of them when he’d been born, but they’d grown thick and fast as he got older.
She was proud of that crown of curls.
Meant she’d got her priorities right.
As low as her fire burned, as thin as her plating wore, her little Lucky got everything he needed. He was peacefully dozing in the cot she’d fashioned him, his tiny fists curled by his face. His mouth hung slightly open, a cherubic little o softened by the shape of his lips. He was not-quite-snoring, the softest hint of a whistling note as he exhaled. He’d kept his chubby baby cheeks, thank goodness, stayed healthy and filled out even as he’d started crawling and making his first wobbly attempts at standing.
She could have spent forever, just staring at him. Watching his tiny chest go up and down with his breathing, air flowing across the faint glow of his little warming fire. It was hard to imagine that he’d ever been smaller than this, even when she could blink and see that version of him, her tiny, oil-flushed newborn tucked close in his little sling.
Eventide wanted to watch him, because this baby would disappear just as fast as that one had— but she had a job to do. And if she started now, she could still get it done in time for the countdown to midnight.
He wouldn’t remember, she thought, as she crept to the kitchen. He definitely didn’t understand the concept yet; when she’d told him all about his upcoming birthday, he’d just smiled and babbled back, engaged but uncomprehending. He’d just about started talking back, could say hi and mama and was working on bye-bye. No wonder he didn’t get the “birthday” concept; her last one had passed somewhere in the haze of yard-hunting and throwing together their little shed.
Ingredients lined up on the worktop, she frowned, turning around and crossing back to him. She brushed a calloused thumb over his face, checking to make sure he was still warm enough.
Despite herself, let it creep beneath his collar.
The rough patch of metal wasn’t big. A sliver of the size of a fingernail. But it was there.
And it would spread.
There was another reason she’d pulled things together for a cake this year. Would, every year, because stars above there would be more of them if she had anything to say about it.
For now, though, that meant doing her best to bake with her sleeping baby three feet away. She’d got the recipe from one of the old passenger coaches, the ones who still called her young lady even with little Lucky in tow. It should bake up soft enough for him to eat with four-and-a-bit soft alloy teeth, easy for him to rip chunks out of. She’d scrimped for the frosting and skipped canteen lunches for the eggs, relying a bit more on picking through leftovers from her job at the mess.
And it would be worth the work, even if he wasn’t likely to remember it.
A few hours later, she took a break from decorating, and rang in the new year.
“Happy birthday to you,” she kept her voice low, grinning at her baby from behind her borrowed camera. “Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear Lu-cky….”
He beamed from his booster seat where she’d hooked it onto the table, digging his chubby hands directly into the cake. She’d done a decent job, she thought, with the little stars and messily-piped moons. She’d kept him in his nightclothes, soft, warm layers against the bitter January chill creeping in around the door and windows. He looked just adorable.
If only Memphis could have seen this.
“Happy birthday to you!”
The flashbulb startled him, but not enough that the picture wouldn’t turn out, Eventide was pretty sure. She couldn’t bear to bother with that any more, anyway— not when her little Lucky was tentatively peeling the frosted stars off the cake, squishing the sponge between his tiny fingers.
She wanted to see every second of it.
Because between the two of them, she wasn’t sure how many seconds they’d get.
Momma tied the strings of the small, cloud-printed apron. Tugged the hairnet down.
“Okay, do we have… butter?”
“Uh-huh!”
A tiny hand pointed across to the counter, where the ingredients were clustered. The marble countertop seemed crammed; they were making two different kinds of buttercream, and had a whole jar of jam to use up, on top of all the dry goods and the strawberry syrup for drizzling.
“So do you think we’re all ready?”
“Yea!” Her granddaughter clapped her hands together, grinning brightly. Blazing Dawn had a very good understanding of birthday cake, being that she had so many birthdays to celebrate. “Is gonna be the best.”
Most of the kids were away for the winter; they’d just got the girls. Across the way in the dining room, two heads of blue bobbed in the flurry of day-of decorating and present wrapping as the older girls bickered.
It was a little tricky to bake with a three-year-old, but Momma managed it. She was constantly pulling little hands out of the dough, and more importantly out of the toddler’s mouth— Rusty had been nowhere near as much a fiend for icing sugar, but he’d never really had the chance to be. His first birthday cake was the last time she’d been able to afford it for years.
Now, standing in the kitchen his championship winnings had bought, she knew that her little lucky star would never want for icing sugar again. Or anything else, for that matter. But she still set aside the stencil so she could outline his name in it later— make it as clear as she could through cooking that she was so, so immeasurably proud of him. That the starlight had smiled upon him, and he had seized the opportunity to build something beautiful.
Something very, very beautiful.
Finch’s voice pitched up in the other room, with a quiet answer from Corrie.
Momma hovered close to her youngest grandchild. Blazing Dawn was kneeling on a barstool, using both hands to slowly shake flour into the bowl of the stand mixer as it ran.
There were little wisps of green, scattered through her hair. Her machinery sang with a smooth hum instead of chuffing, a steam turbine whirring away in her chest.
But set against the window, silhouetted by the sun…
That crown of curls looked exactly the same.