"A Small Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
One of the many fantastic stories in Carver’s Cathedral, “A Small Good Thing” finds a young mother and father in a period of shock when their son is left unconscious and after a hit-and-run. To make matters worse, they keep getting calls in the middle of the night from a shopping mall baker telling them to pick up their son’s birthday cake — a cake that might never be eaten.
While it’s true that a lot of short stories are smarter than they are humane, the final act of “A Small Good Thing” delivers a graceful moment of emotional truth: one that will likely stick with you for a while.