I stared at my phone screen, watching the group chat light up with messages about weekend plans and birthday celebrations. My friends were planning a surprise party for someone named Jessica from their office. GIFs, balloons, and screenshots of Pinterest dessert tables flew past in a blur.
I smiled, genuinely happy for her, even though my own birthday had come and gone three days earlier without a single text from my family. Twenty‑seven years old, and I still felt that familiar ache every October when my birthday rolled around. Every single year, my parents and my older sister, Veronica, managed to be unavailable.
Work conferences. Important deadlines. Last‑minute emergencies that somehow always coincided with October fifteenth.
When I was twelve, they missed my birthday because Veronica had a dance recital in Seattle and my mom “couldn’t be in two places at once.” When I turned sixteen, my father had an urgent business trip to Dallas and took Veronica along to “see how real business worked,” leaving me at home with a grocery store cake my aunt dropped off. On my twenty‑first, my mother claimed she had a migraine and stayed in bed all day while Veronica went shopping with her friends at Pioneer Place. The excuses piled up like sediment, layer after layer pressing down on my chest.
I worked as a commercial interior designer in Portland, specializing in restaurant and café spaces from Alberta Street down to the Pearl. The work kept me busy, and over the past three years I had built a solid reputation in the industry. My portfolio included some of the most talked‑about dining rooms in the Pacific Northwest, places people tagged on Instagram under warm Edison bulbs and reclaimed wood ceilings.
The money was good—better than good—and I had been careful with it. I maxed out my retirement accounts, invested through a brokerage app, and kept a separate high‑yield savings account labeled simply “Future.”
My apartment in the Pearl District reflected my design aesthetic: clean lines, natural materials, lots of plants, and warm lighting that made everything feel like golden hour. Floor‑to‑ceiling windows looked toward the Willamette and the freckled lights of the Fremont Bridge.
It was cozy and stylish and very me. But it was just me there. Always just me, especially on days that should have mattered.
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