The Candle Labeled “To Brandon’s Girl”

It had one word, printed in capital letters, the same hand that had written To Brandon’s Girl the morning before.

It read: GUEST.

Two labels, then, in less than twenty-four hours.

Two deliberate little knives, each one delivering the message Gene would never say aloud, each one placed where a child would have to find it herself.

And this second one told me something the first hadn’t, which was that Gene had not learned a thing.

The candle, on Christmas morning, she might have half-talked herself into believing was defensible — a cheap gift, an oversight, nothing anyone could really prove.

But the place card was different.