For a long moment, Brooke didn’t move. The coffee urn hissed behind me. Noah tugged at my sleeve, and somewhere a nurse laughed at Mr. Brennan’s joke. Kyle stood beside his wife with his hands jammed in his pockets, looking at the floor the way he used to when he was ten and had broken something.

Then Brooke’s chin began to shake. She didn’t take the apron. Instead, she reached into her coat pocket, pulled out a folded envelope, and laid it on the counter beside the gravy. The bank’s logo was printed in the corner. Kyle’s head snapped up. “Brooke, don’t,” he said quietly. But she was already looking straight at me, tears spilling over. “Those weren’t rules, Bev,” she whispered. “They were the only Christmas we could afford.”