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
the lid.
Inside, there was a thick stack of white paper. At least two hundred pages. And on top of the stack, there was a single folded document with a blue cover.
