The club had a procedure for receiving gifts.

The staff would not be instructed to interrupt the ceremony or read anything aloud.

I owned that decision.

It wasn’t harmless simply because the items were soft and ordinary.

It was a decision to allow a message Daniel might resent, and I would not leave Elliot to take every consequence alone.

Before the box left, I inspected all of it.

The pacifier was Ben’s, saved with the little things I had kept from his first year.