“Matching phones,” he said. “Isn’t that sweet? Like matching rings.”
I heard someone gasp behind me. I think it was my mother.
Michael finally found his voice. “Tom,” he said. “Tom, look, this isn’t what it looks like. Let’s go inside and talk about this privately. Like adults. There are kids here.”
“There are,” Tom said. He glanced over at the swing set, where Sophie and Ben were sitting very still. Then he looked back at Michael. “You didn’t seem too worried about the kids thirty seconds ago.”
He set both phones down carefully on the long table, next to a mason jar of sunflowers.
Then he reached under the table. There was a box under there. I hadn’t noticed it before. It was a big white box, the size of a shirt box, wrapped in silver paper with a gold ribbon.
He held it out to Rachel.
“Happy anniversary, sweetheart,” he said. “Do you know what the traditional gift is for a first anniversary?”
Rachel stared at the box. Her hands stayed at her sides.
“Paper,” Tom said. “The first anniversary is paper. So I got you paper.”
She didn’t take it. So he pulled off the gold ribbon himself. He tore off the silver paper. He lifted
