The Candle Labeled “To Brandon’s Girl”

I have to tell you about that word, little, because Gene used it like a scalpel and almost no one ever noticed. Little Holly. It sounds tender.

It sounds like the kind of thing a doting grandmother says.

But Gene never once called any of the other grandchildren little anything; they got their full names, said with pride. Little was reserved for Holly, and it did a very specific job: it made her small, and it made her generic, one interchangeable small thing rather than a particular beloved person.

Everything Gene said about my daughter did that job.