But something happened, over that year. I think — and I can’t prove this, but I believe it — I think what Mia said got into her. A ten-year-old had stood up in front of two hundred people and named the exact broken thing in Donna’s heart, gently, sadly, and told her she’d have to grow something new before anybody could catch it. And I think, in the long quiet after, when all her allies had drifted away and the story had stopped being interesting to anyone, Donna sat alone with those words.
She called me about a year later. Late, the way she always called. But she wasn’t furious this time. She was quiet. She cried. She said she’d been thinking about the wedding every day. She said she didn’t know why she did it, that she’d been so full of wanting-something and hating that a little kid had it, and that she was so ashamed she could barely say it out loud.
