it through my dress.
“It was never a contest, Crystal,” I said.
“Easy for you to say. You’re the one at the head table.”
We sat there for a while. Inside the barn, I could hear people cheering. They were cutting the cake.
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“I didn’t mean to lie to her,” Crystal said finally. Her voice was small. “About the cards. I didn’t plan it. I swear I didn’t. She just pulled out that box, and she looked at me like I was… like I was
somebody good. Nobody’s looked at me like that in a long time. And I couldn’t make myself tell her.”
“And the stories?” I asked. “About me keeping you away?”
She didn’t answer for a long time.
“I needed a reason,” she whispered. “For why I didn’t come back. And ‘I was scared and selfish and too ashamed to pick up the phone’ didn’t sound very good.”
