My eight-year-old skipped lunch for six weeks to buy a red dress for the little girl across the street. The next morning our lawn was covered with fifty lunchboxes — and taped to the biggest one, a beat-up metal thing sitting alone in the middle of the grass, was a note that said OPEN THIS ONE FIRST.

Milo had gone upstairs to wrap the dress. I came back down the hall with the Deerling's bag to get the tape, and Rosalind stood up out of her chair and took it out of my hands.

I didn't let go right away. The handles stretched between us for a second before they came free.

She set it on the table, reached in through the tissue paper, and lifted the dress out by the shoulders, up at the height of her own face, so everyone could see it.

The room went quiet in one beat. Fourteen people. My uncle-in-law looked at his plate. Dean put his knife down and did not look up.

And my mother-in-law said, in a perfectly calm and reasonable voice:

"Give me that. That child doesn't even know what a birthday is, and you let him go without lunch for six weeks. You're taking it back. Say it."