She pulled out the tissue paper slowly.
Inside was a cheap vanilla candle.
If the candle had been the only difference, I could have swallowed my anger for Zia’s sake and dealt with Lorraine privately afterward.
Children do not need every gift to cost the same amount, and Zia had never been the sort of kid who measured affection by a price tag.
The candle was not what hurt.
The tag was.
Lorraine had written it herself.
To Travis’s Girl.
For a moment, the usual Christmas noise seemed to collapse around those three words.
A fork stopped halfway to someone’s plate.
One cousin dropped his eyes toward the carpet as if suddenly fascinated by it.
The little dog beneath the table backed away from the chair legs.
Beside me, Travis squeezed his paper coffee cup so hard the side caved inward.
Lorraine kept smiling.
That smile told me she knew exactly what she had done, because it was the same expression she used whenever she wanted everyone else to participate in pretending that an insult was too small for decent people to mention.
