Page 36 of The Birthday Girl
I t had been three days since the detectives left her house with news she could still barely process, and three days of silence, unanswered calls, and a grief that refused to take shape.
Danielle barely ate, barely slept, and when she did close her eyes, she woke choking on the same question—why hadn’t anyone told her?
Danielle swiped at her swollen eyes with the back of her hand, though the tears kept coming faster than she could catch them. Her parents were gone. Dead. Never coming back.
She staggered to the kitchen, more out of muscle memory than any conscious need, and stood in front of the open refrigerator with no clue what she was looking for.
Somewhere behind the rot of old lettuce, a carton of eggs stared back at her.
Danielle grabbed them, set them on the counter, and then let her hands drop to her sides.
She pictured her mother there, in that same kitchen, preparing soup when she was sick as she hummed an off-tune melody. The memory struck with such force that Danielle doubled over, elbows hitting the counter, and stayed that way long enough for the eggs to come to room temperature.
Hearing her daughter cry, Danielle quickly straightened, wiped snot from her lip, and shuffled into the living room where Tyricka lay on the sofa, trying to suck her thumb.
Tyricka's eyes flicked up to meet Danielle's, and her tiny face crumpled like tissue paper, her wails rising to match the storm behind her mother’s swollen lids as if grief could pass between them.
She scooped Tyricka up, and they both were soaked in tears and mucus. Danielle wasn’t built for this. She could manage the grit of the streets, but the logistics of continuing to exist without her parents’ presence left her adrift.
Tyricka’s small hands fisted her shirt with abrupt, panicked strength, and Danielle pressed her daughter’s head to her shoulder as she staggered back toward the kitchen.
Outside, the city carried on oblivious. Somewhere, a garbage truck reversed, bleating. The neighbor’s dog barked at imagined threats. Life, Danielle thought, was supposed to keep going, but hers had collapsed inward.
Her phone vibrated, and she rushed back to the living room to grab it off the coffee table. It was Miracle, her other best friend. Danielle answered with a strangled, “Hello,” but even that small effort felt like a betrayal of her interior collapse.
“Dani,” Miracle said, “I just listened to the message you left about your parents. I am so fucking sorry.”
Danielle attempted a laugh to cut the tension, but came out as a hiccuped sob. “You just heard? I thought—” She paused, picking at a scab on her arm, and looked down at the child sagging into her hip. “Never mind. I—yeah. Thanks for calling.”
Miracle’s voice softened, sliding into an intimacy that had comforted Danielle since junior high. “You want me to come over? I can bring wine. Or weed, or both? The good kind, not the shit we used to buy behind the library.”
Danielle’s lips twitched upward, betraying her for a split second, and she pushed a hand through her unwashed hair. “Bring the box of wine, and maybe takeout, if you got cash. I can’t really smoke since I’m breastfeeding.”
“Done and done,” Miracle said. “See you in twenty.”
The call ended, leaving a vacuum that filled rapidly with Tyricka’s babble and the low buzz of the refrigerator’s compressor.
Danielle slid the phone back onto the table, wishing, not for the first time, that someone else could call and wake her from this nightmare—someone with a voice that said, “Actually, no, it was all a mistake. Your mom and dad are on their way home now.” However, the only certainty was silence, followed by the pounding in her chest.
Danielle slid down to the floor, her back against the coffee table's edge, watching Tyricka's tiny mouth work around her thumb.
The walls seemed to have retreated, leaving too much empty space between them, space that echoed with absence.
Each tick from the kitchen clock hammered against her eardrums, and her chest tightened.
If she didn't move, do something, anything, she'd splinter apart right there on the carpet.
With trembling fingers, she grabbed her phone and punched her parents' names into the search bar. Tears blurred the screen before she blinked them away, revealing a cascade of headlines.
BANKS COUPLE PRESUMED DEAD IN BOAT EXPLOSION.
DEbrIS RECOVERED BUT NO BODIES FOUND.
DAUGHTER TAHLIA BANKS RELEASES STATEMENT.
Her thumb hovered over the words until they scrolled out of view, replaced by another post, then another. Every feed, every blog, and every gossip site buzzed with Tahlia and her parents’ names, but not hers.
Then she froze. She thought the detectives’ news was the worst of it, but nothing prepared her for what stared back at her. A flyer gleamed against the glow of her phone with a black background, white serif lettering, and roses bordering the corners.
Honoring the Life of Steve and Tisha Banks — Hosted by Their Daughter, Tahlia Banks. Public Service Open to the Community. New Hope Baptist Church, Sunday at 2 PM.
She read it once, twice, then again before slamming the phone down on the couch cushion.
Her lungs burned as she sucked air through clenched teeth, each breath shorter than the last until her ribs ached against her skin.
The tears evaporated from her cheeks, leaving salt trails that tightened her skin like drying glue.
“I just know this bitch didn’t,” Danielle whispered, voice cracking.
Her hands shook as she snatched the phone back up to stare at the image again. “She… she kept everything from me.”
Her parents’ faces smiled from the flyer, framed not by family but by Tahlia’s name alone. Danielle wasn’t mentioned. Not once. She let out a sob that bent into a laugh, wild and hollow.
“That fake bitch knew for weeks and didn’t say a word to me.” Her laugh came out jagged and splintered between sobs. “She’s out there giving statements, planning memorials, and posing for cameras like I don’t even exist.”
Danielle jabbed the flyer with her finger until the image blurred. “She wants the world to see her as the grieving daughter, but she’s got me fucked up on all levels. I’m not letting her stand up there and play that part like she isn’t the devil incarnate.”
She clutched Tyricka closer, whispering into her baby’s ear. “We’re going, mama. She can’t keep us away from this.”
Danielle was pacing her living room when a knock rattled the door. Tyricka startled against her chest, whimpering, and Danielle pressed her lips to the baby’s crown, whispering, “Shh, it’s okay.”
She tugged the door open with her free hand, and Miracle stood there with rain dripping from the ends of her braids and her leather jacket clinging to her shoulders.
She raised one brow, eyes scanning Danielle’s blotchy face. “You look like shit, babe. We got to get you together,” Miracle said, pushing past her into the living room without waiting for an invitation.
Danielle sniffed hard, her grip on Tyricka tightening. “Fuck you, but okay.”
Miracle dropped her bag on the couch and sank into the cushions with a sigh. “How are you holding up?”
Danielle exhaled through her nose, shifting Tyricka onto her hip before sitting across from Miracle. The flyer was still lit on her phone screen, its glow bleeding through her fingers. She shoved it across the table toward Miracle. “Not good at all. Have you seen this shit?”
Miracle picked it up, scanned the words, then lifted her gaze slowly. “When were you planning to tell me?”
Danielle barked out a hollow laugh. “Tell you? I didn’t even know until now. That bitch planned a whole memorial without me. Put her name on everything, like she was their only child.”
“She knew weeks ago,” Miracle said flatly, setting the phone down. “Are you surprised she’d pull a stunt like this?”
Danielle’s jaw clenched. “I’m really not. While I’ve been calling, crying, and wondering where the fuck my parents were, she knew they were already gone, and instead of picking up the phone, she moved on without me.”
Tyricka began to cry, the kind that came from pure frustration, and Danielle’s arms tightened around her instinctively, her voice cracking as she spoke. “Even my baby feels it. This house feels it. I can’t breathe in here.”
Miracle leaned forward, staring into Danielle’s eyes. “So what’s your move?”
Danielle swiped her palm across her wet cheeks, her breathing ragged. “I’m crashing that fucking memorial tomorrow, and the world’s gonna see me drag her ass right off that podium. I don’t give a fuck. I’m getting that bitch for playing with me.”
Miracle smirked, though her eyes stayed hard. “Well damn, Dani. Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
Danielle’s lips curved into something sharp and bitter. “Good advice.”
The next morning, Danielle woke before the gray sun had managed to peel itself from the horizon.
She leaned over the crib, careful not to jostle Tyricka, and watched her daughter’s small chest rise and fall.
It was a steady, anchoring rhythm, and for a moment, Danielle let herself believe that things could still be normal, that this was just another bad morning on the far side of a worse night.
However, the air in the house was wrong, more still than usual, as if the walls themselves mourned.
In the dull light of the bathroom, Danielle raked her fingers through her tangled braids and pulled herself together with angry resolve. Her reflection looked foreign, carved down and puckered around the eyes, but she met her own gaze with a glint that told of her fury.
Back inside her bedroom, she ransacked her closet, yanking hangers so hard the rod threatened to come loose from the drywall. She pulled out a black wrap dress she’d bought for a wake two years back, with the tags still attached. It had a deep V-neck and a fabric belt that tied at the waist.
Danielle showered, then bathed Tyricka and wrapped her in a clean towel.
Afterward, she gently set her baby in her carrier by the bathroom door, then dressed in the still-damp air.
She yanked the wrap dress higher on her shoulders and cinched the belt as tightly as the fabric allowed.
With her added baby weight, the dress was unflattering, but she didn’t care.
She avoided the mirror as she smeared on a single streak of eyeliner before giving up and settling for the smudges under her eyes.
Miracle returned mid-morning as promised with a coffee clutched in one hand and a bouquet in the other.
She didn’t comment on Danielle’s puffy face or the state of her living room.
Instead, she watched Danielle try to fill the diaper bag, then wordlessly took over, adding wipes, a pacifier, and, without asking, a spare onesie in case Tyricka had an accident.
“You need me to get her dressed,” Miracle asked, seeing as though Danielle had seemed to have forgotten.
Danielle shrugged, busying herself by cramming wipes and bottles into the bag. Miracle reached over and scooped Tyricka up, cradling her against her chest as she reached for a tiny outfit from the pile on the sofa. She dressed the baby while stealing glances at Danielle’s brittle movements.
“You know Tahlia is going to lose her shit when you show up,” Miracle said, tucking Tyricka into a black pants bodysuit and a tiny black cardigan. “You sure you’re up for the blowback?”
Danielle’s jaw locked. “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be going.” She zipped the diaper bag with finality and set it by the door. “Tahlia is about to learn that I’m not the person to fuck with.”
Before she left, Danielle posted the flyer on her story and tagged Tahlia in all caps, the caption: YOU PLAYED THE WRONG BITCH!