Gina sat very still.
Forty dolls. Forty dolls in — she looked at her watch — thirty-five minutes. And one of them, the one she'd had in her hand, the one she'd dropped on Dot's cart in a fit of embarrassment and charm, was gone now, out the doors and onto State Street in somebody else's shopping bag, going home to somebody else's tree.
It was only a doll. She did not need a doll. She did not even, strictly speaking, know who the doll was for.
And still, for a moment, she felt it — that old, sharp, specific feeling from childhood, the feeling of the race lost by a step, of the raffle number called that was one digit off from yours. And underneath it something older and quieter that she did not want to look at in the Evergreen Room in front of a tax attorney.
"Hey," said Graham.
She looked up. He was watching her across the table, and the teasing had gone out of his face.
"You all right?"
"Fine," said Gina. "I'm fine. My tongue hurts."