Happy Birthday Who: Parker What: Parker dropping off a cake and birthday card at Jo’s When: After several people signed the card, after Parker brought up the topic of birthday cake Where: Jo’s roadhouse, I think, if she’s there. Rating: Nothing crazy
In the real Boston, the one Parker used to live in, she had kept herself busy by stealing to help other people. In Lawrence, as the world was ending, she sometimes did the same thing, though less often. She’d been dropping off stolen merchandise as gifts at the doors of those who needed it. She liked it. It made her feel like Santa Claus or even like a fairy godmother minus the wings and wand. She couldn’t exorcise demons or anything like that. This was her contribution to the people who had taken her in.
Thinking too much about the coming apocalypse brought her down and it seemed like it had the same effect on the others on the side of good as well. She’d heard Jo Harvelle mention that she’d forgotten about her birthday because of everything that had gone on. Parker took this as a sign from above telling her to steal the hunter a cake.
She huddled over her notebook computer, looking up bakeries in Lawrence Kansas and finally settled on one called Slice of Life. She tried to dress inconspicuously and headed out to the bakery. It had been simpler than she’d originally thought it would. Parker imagined that, with as busy as the bakery seemed to be, it would be hours before they even noticed that their tasty morsel was gone. Mission: Successful.
Parker set the cake right in front of the main entrance to the roadhouse, placing the birthday card she’d had signed for Jo on the cake’s box. She rapped her knuckles on the door and ran across the street to watch the event unfold from a distance.