So she came across and took it out of my hands and put it down on the table.
“Give me that before you drop it. It was a joke.”
Thirty people. My father four feet away.
Nobody said one word.
And then, from behind me, Bram Prewitt laughed. One short laugh with nothing in it at all.
I could not see what he was doing because he was at my shoulder.
But I watched my sister’s face stop, and I watched my husband go grey.
“Actually,” Bram said. “I’ve got a present for you.”
PART 2 — THE PRESENT
He had it in a gift bag under the table where the cards were, and it had been there since about eleven that morning.
Wrapped properly. Ribbon, the lot.