She paused. The whole room leaned in.
“It’s not because you never caught the flowers,” Mia said, gently, almost sadly, the way you’d explain something to a person you felt sorry for. “It’s because of what you just did. You saw a kid in a wheelchair who was happy for one single second, and you couldn’t stand it. You had to take it. And a person who does that—” her voice caught, but she pushed through it, “—a person who takes happiness away from a little kid just so they can have it instead — that’s not a person somebody wants to marry, Aunt Donna. The flowers were never the problem. Your heart is.”
A sound went through the room. Not a gasp this time. Something warmer. Somewhere, one person started to clap.
Then another.
Then a whole table.
“My legs don’t work,” Mia said, and now she was crying again, but she was smiling through it, this fierce, shining smile, “and I used to think that made me broken. I used to call myself the broken girl. I thought nobody would ever love me. I thought I should just disappear.”
