I had my blinker on for pickup spot four when a white SUV cut across the lane and slid into the space right in front of my bumper. The woman who climbed out didn’t look embarrassed, and she didn’t look sorry. She pointed straight at my windshield and said, “Find another spot. I have a real order.” I glanced at the clock on my dashboard. In less than an hour, my daughter’s 10th birthday party was supposed to begin, and all I needed was the cake I had ordered and paid for two days earlier. But when a young employee pushed a cart through the side doors, that woman stepped into her path, pointed at the boxes meant for my little girl, and said, “Put those in my car.” And that was only the first thing she demanded.
My name is Nathan Cole, and I was 39 that spring. I repair heating and air conditioning systems for a service company outside Raleigh, North Carolina, a job that runs on shifts and emergency calls. I’m divorced, and my ex-wife and I have managed to raise our daughter without turning every holiday into a fight, which I don’t take for granted. Because of my rotation, I usually have to lock in my time with Maya weeks in advance, and I had requested the morning of her birthday almost two months early. It mattered more than usual that year, because it was her first birthday since her mother’s move across the county, her first party with a brand-new circle of friends. Maya wanted a space theme, of course, because she has wanted to be an astronaut, then an astronomer, then an engineer who builds rockets for astronauts, all before she turned nine. I spent three evenings at my kitchen table cutting planets out of poster board and sponge painting Saturn’s rings. I filled a bag with foil-wrapped chocolate meteors for a scavenger hunt and built a cardboard launch pad for the paper rockets Maya and I were supposed to fire together. I’m not a man with a lot of spare money, but I’d set aside what I could and the centerpiece was a cake decorated like a silver rocket climbing through blue frosting stars.