I want you to understand that she was not greedy.

Holly has never once judged love by a price tag; she would have been happy with a coloring book, with a candy cane, with nothing at all but her name said warmly.

She was not waiting for an iPad.

She was waiting, the way children wait, simply to be included in the circle of the morning.

And then Gene turned to her, and her smile flickered for just a fraction of a second into something colder, and she said, “Oh — look.

It’s little Holly.” And she reached behind her chair.