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“Darling,” Adrianna shrieked, and fleard hiolden hair and Chanel

“Happy thirty-fifth birthday, darling” She looked up at him and smiled “Surprised?”

His face felt stiff “Yes,” he said “Very surprised”

Adrianna laughed and looped her arh his “Just look at his face,” she said to the crowd around the”

Everybody laughed, everybody but Tyler, orking at keeping his smile locked into place

“I doubt it,” he said

Adrianna tossed her head so that her hair flowed over her bare shoulders

“You’re wondering how I ne, the flowers The band” As if on cue, reat rooan toon to the smile and toyour wallet froh it, to learn your actual birthday after you let slip that the big Three-Five was co up”

“Did I?” he said, wondering how, and when, and why he’d been so loose-lipped

“At that dinner for theabout turning forty, and you grinned and said wasn’t it a pity he was such an old fogy, that you were only just approaching—”

All Tyler’s good intentions fled “I wish you hadn’t done this, Adrianna”

His hed softly “You’re just annoyed that I peeked over your shoulder while you entered those codes”

“Yes And that you went through ed this party”

“Don’t you like surprises, darling?”

“No,” he said coldly, “I do not”

“Well, then, next time, you can help me plan your party” Adrianna smiled coyly “We could even make it a special occasion, Tyler After all, we’ll have been together more than a year by then”

Tyler didn’t answer He took her hand in his, put his other ar circle while he wondered just how long it would take for the night to end

An eternity, that was how long That was how long it seemed, anyway

The last guests finally left, the last catering van departed The house was silent, the big, expensively decorated roo traces of perfume and roses

“I’ll take you home,” Tyler had said to Adrianna He’d known his voice was expressionless, his eyes cold, but he’d done the best he could and noas time to deal with reality

Either Adrianna hadn’t recognized that, or she’d pretended not to

“Let s,” she’d replied, and vanished up the stairs

He’d waited and waited, pacing the length of the foyer, telling himself to control his te without a scene After five or ten one upstairs

Adrianna was in the shower He could hear the water running in the bathroom

Tyler had flung an oath into the darkened bedroom, jammed his hands into the pockets of his trousers and settled in to wait

Now he stood at the , staring out at the inky darkness, the façade he’dhe’d smiled, he’d chatted, he’d shaken hands with the uests had offered their birthday congratulations

He puffed out his breath, watched it fog the glass How generous would they have been with their good wishes, their handshakes, their kisses, if they knew the truth, he wondered If the front door had opened and the boy he’d once been had co across theanybody to try to throw him out

The thought was so preposterous it alh

“Da hiets to celebrate his birthday in such style”

My birthday, Tyler thought His mouth twisted Who in hell knew if this was his birthday or not? The truth was, he ht have come into this world yesterday, or maybe even the day before that Babies that were dumped on hospital doorsteps didn’t come complete with birth certificates

The Brightons, who’d raised him, had told hiiven to them They’d told him, too, that nobody was sure exactly what day he’d been born, but that the authorities figured he’d been somewhere between one and three days old, when he was found

When he was really little, he just hadn’t understood it

“Everybody has a real birthday,” he’d said, and the Brightons would say yes, that was true And he had one Those same anonymous authorities had decided on July 18

“But as my mommy?” he’d ask “And my daddy?”

Myra and Jahton would look at each other, then at him “We’re your parents,” one of them would say

But they weren’t Oh, they were kind to him Or perhaps it was more accurate to say they didn’t mistreat him—but he knew they never loved him He saas, with other kids How a father smoothed a hand over a son’s hair, how a mother pulled her boy close and kissed him

Tyler’s life wasn’t like that Nobody touched hiood or even got angry when they weren’t

And his name Tyler’s mouth thinned with the pain of the memory

John Sroith a name like that?

He’d wanted to change it but the Brightons said he couldn’t

“It’s your nahton said

So it was And he lived with it With all of it By the ti questions that never were answered What was the point? The Brightons never adopted hiave him their naed The three of the when a truck hit their car

Tyler wasn’t so much as scratched He stood by the side of the road, a police without a trace of expression on his face as his foster parents’ bodies were removed from the wreck and taken away

“The kid’s in shock,” he heard the cop tell the social worker who came for him and maybe he was But the reality was that deep down, he couldn’t mourn people he’d never known

The state took him in He was sent to live in a place with lots of other boys like hiave a damn about, kids with no future—

But even they had real names

He took a lot of crap over his

“John S? Nobody’s named John Smith”

They were right, and Tyler knew it On the day he turned sixteen—the day his bogus birth certificate said he turned sixteen—he took his first name from a chapter in his American history textbook and his second from a character in a TV movie

The kids laughed and sneered even harder

“Nobody names himself,” they said

“I do,” Tyler had replied, and when they went on laughing, he bloodied soain

From then on, Tyler Kincaid ho he was It was Tyler Kincaid who danced on the edge of the juvenile justice systeht joyriding in a car he’d “borrowed” froh he sure hadn’t thought so, at the tiht months at a place called Boys Ranch, where he learned so about horses and maybe even about himself