He had noticed the mark on her shoe in the driveway and knelt down to fix it, and said she deserved one holiday where she felt chosen. Four years of being called Declan’s girl, your child, that sweet little visitor. Never once granddaughter. On Christmas morning the cousins opened tablets and thick envelopes, and then Marguerite handed my eight year old a drugstore bag with a vanilla candle in it and a tag reading To Declan’s Girl, and kept smiling as though noticing would be the rude thing.

That night Wren sat on the guest bed with the candle in her lap and asked me whether she was only her dad’s girl. Declan knelt in front of her, told her no tag decides who she is, and put the red velvet box in her hands and said the choice about giving it was hers alone.