At nine years old, you can still tell yourself a thing is a fluke. Adults are busy. Schedules get mixed up. Parents make mistakes. I let myself believe all of that because children are built for hope. They have to be. It’s how they survive families that haven’t earned their loyalty.
The problem was that the next year it happened again.
Then the year after that.
Then the year after that.
My birthday fell on July 14th, which in my family might as well have been stamped with the words SUBJECT TO CANCELLATION. By then Gavin’s baseball had evolved from a hobby into a religion, and my parents were its most devoted missionaries. He wasn’t just playing little league anymore. He was on a travel team. Then another. Then a more elite team with uniforms that looked sharper, tournament names that sounded more official, and fees that made my mother’s jaw tighten when she paid them but never enough to stop paying.
