I shake my head. My mom hasn’t always been this way—so pushy. Well, she sort of has, considering it was her idea for Ella and me to get married in the first place, but she seems to be getting pushier the older she gets.

Raymond’s brows crease and my mom starts explaining the little Christmas present dilemma. I feel my inside wind into knots, worried that it’s going to upset him and he’s going to take it out on Ella. I know they’ve been good and everything, but still I can’t shake the past and the things I’ve seen.

And when my mom says, “So we were wondering if maybe there was something of Maralynn’s we could give her, maybe in one of those boxes I helped you put in the garage a few weeks ago?”

He scratches his head, looking really uncomfortable. “I’m not really sure there is. I mean, most of that stuff was just old clothes of hers.”

I tug on my mom’s sleeve and say to Mr. Daniels, “No worries, we’ll figure something else out.”

My mom ignores me, keeping her feet planted. “There’s not even, like, a piece of her jewelry or something? Like some earrings that were hers?”

Raymond looks even more uneasy and I’m about to just walk off and leave her there when suddenly he stands up straighter and looks over at the garage.

“Hold on… I think I just thought of something.” He leans back into the house and grabs a large coat, slipping it on along with a beanie before he steps out and shuts the door. We follow him to the garage and my mom shoots me a grin, like, Ha-ha, I was right, and I shake my head but smile.

When we get inside the garage, Mr. Daniels flips on the lights and heads over to a stack of boxes in the corner. He lifts up the top box and sets it aside and then stares at the box below it for a moment, almost as if he’s afraid to open it. I glance at my mom, who swallows hard, looking a bit uneasy. But then Mr. Daniels relaxes a little and carefully opens the box. He rummages around inside it for a moment and then he takes out this small wooden box. When he turns around, he’s holding it in his hand like it’s something really important.

“We didn’t have a real wedding, you know,” he says, looking up from the box. “We barely even dressed up.”

My mom nods understandingly. “Micha’s father and I got married at a park and I think there was, like, a total of ten guests.”