Tell Me You Love Me

Luke's Birthday(Sixty)

Edited 10/30/18

Can you believe it's already the sixtieth chapter? Also, I think a couple chapters earlier I said that Luke was six, but he's just turning six now. Anyway, on with the story.

It's May 22nd. Luke's sixth birthday. And Annabeth's not here to see it. She's been gone almost four months. Our search parties have repeatedly come up empty, but thankfully no one's willing to give up on the search. I also search regularly. Sometimes I bring the kids, but not as much anymore. I usually leave them with a trusted demigod at Camp where I know they'll be safe.

It's hard to imagine that we'll have another baby in five months. A mere twenty or so weeks. I can only hope we'll find her by that time.

Besides going to the authorities, we've also gone to the gods for help. We knew the chances of them actually helping us were pretty slim, but we tried anyway. They told us they'd keep an eye out, but there wasn't much else they could do without breaking the ancient laws.

Ariana turned three on April 3rd and then Sammy also turned three on April 13th. Then Riley turned two April 27th. And now it was Luke turning six. We didn't have much of a celebration. No one was in the mood for celebrating. I remembered back to a conversation months ago when Luke brought up the topic of his sixth birthday. He said he wanted it to be Spider-Man themed which Annabeth did not agree with, but she eventually decided it would be okay. As long as the cake was lemon flavored.

So here we were on the 22nd of May, in some random Dairy Queen, just the kids and I, enjoying a Spider-Man ice cream cake with a hint of lemon. I had taken the kids with me for the week to look and then I'd bring them back to Camp and keep looking.

But at the moment, we just sat in the Dairy Queen, in some town in some state. I wasn't even sure exactly where we were. But we joined hands and prayed. We prayed to all the gods for Luke to have a good birthday and to get his favorite toy. Then we prayed for Annabeth's safety and her rescue.

Luke blew out the candles and we dug in, and as we ate our cake, I all of a sudden thought of the strawberry fields at camp. And a bouquet of wild flowers...