Brendon Hamilton on his 21st birthday. Photo / Supplied
Instead, they told her that her son Brendon Hamilton, Shyanne's father, had been killed.
She remembers the exact words: "Brendon was in a homicide and died this morning at 2.25am."
When Mark arrived with the cake, nobody felt like eating it.
Two weeks later, Adoniah's appetite hasn't returned.
She and Mark go out for breakfast, hoping it will help, but her French toast and his panini still look like they've just been served - 30 minutes afterward.
The cafe manager insists on giving them a refund, but Mark pulls him aside to explain why they're declining it.
The two tattooed, middle-aged men embrace in between full tables in the jostling Arawa St cafe.
Mark then picks up Shyanne out of her chair and puts her bottle aside.
She holds eye contact and forms a smirking smile as her step-grandad wipes off her milk-moustache.
"Brendon was breastfed until he was 3," he says with a chuckle - and a slight wince.
"My other kids would always say he was the favourite," Adoniah adds.
"My son was really loving, he did anything for anybody. The last time he spoke to me he told me he loved me."
Brendon died in a block of flats on Dominion Rd in Auckland.
Four days later, his body came home to Rotorua, where his mother, stepfather and siblings moved two years ago.
Brendon spent half of his time living and working in Auckland, and the rest in Rotorua.
The 21-year-old was the fourth eldest of 11 children. He was buried at Kauae Cemetery last Thursday.
"We were shocked that he had so many friends that turned up, from when he was little and when he played football... Everybody knew him."
Brendon Hamilton holding his daughter Shyanne. Photo / Supplied
As he got older he became more of a joker.
"He always made people laugh and smile, even when they were sad," Adoniah says.
In Mark's words, Brendon was "always the life of the party".
Brendon went to school at Tamaki College, the same as his mother and siblings, before entering the construction industry.
He played rugby throughout his life, and his favourite after-match feed was KFC.
Adoniah says he always had "chubby cheeks".
"We would laugh at how full they got when he ate."
Brendon was part of Tipu Ora's Kia Pakari Young Dads Service in Rotorua and would often take Shyanne to parks.
"She was much too small for the swings, but she loved to sit in them. Brendon would hold her and rock her back and forth."
Adoniah admits Brendon's death didn't seem real until his body came home.
"It was like it wasn't happening and everybody was wondering why I was so strong... Now every day I'm just trying not to cry."
Her eyes start to fill with tears, but she takes another bite, swallows slowly, and continues.
"I have been wanting to get out and say something, I have been just wanting to speak and say 'that was my son, my son'."
Shyanne Hamilton will live a life without memories of her father. Photo / Stephen Parker
"It's probably doing her good talking about it," Mark adds with a reassuring hand on her back.
Shyanne squeals and jiggles her toys, oblivious, as we discuss her future without memories of her father.
The photos on his funeral programme show them together, her age defined by her lengthening brown curls.
As Mark and Adoniah pull out their chairs to leave, they tell me about their jobs for the day.
Going to the bank, getting a death certificate, meeting with a lawyer.
Adoniah picks up Brendon's funeral programme from the table as it's cleared, and her fingers border a phrase in large black italics.
"Don't be sad that I am gone, be glad that I have been."
• An 18-year-old woman appeared in the Auckland District Court last week charged with murder in relation to Brendon Hamilton's death. She was granted interim name suppression and was remanded to appear in the Auckland High Court on June 5.
