She did not measure love in dollar signs, and she would have been genuinely delighted by a candle, by almost anything, if it had been given to her with even the smallest measure of warmth.

Children do not need expensive gifts.

They need to feel wanted.

If the candle had been the whole of it, I would have swallowed my anger and let it go.

The candle was not the whole of it.

Tied around the neck of that cheap glass jar, on a length of thin string, was a small handwritten cardboard tag, and Beatrice had written the words on it herself, in her own black ink, in her own careful hand.

It read: To Caleb’s Girl.