"Gina—"
"You're lying. You do that thing. With your glasses. You do it every time." Her voice was rising, and she couldn't stop it. "You had one. You had one this whole time. Yesterday you sat in my father's chair in my father's suit and that little girl told you about her bad dreams and you said 'I'll do my best,' and you had one in your closet. And I spent all day today calling every store in Illinois, and you had one."
"It's not what you think."
"Then what is it?"
He opened his mouth. He looked at the box, and at her, and she could see him trying to find a way through, some way to answer that wasn't the answer, some loophole in the tax code. She watched him not find one. She watched him decide to protect whatever it was rather than tell her.
"I can't tell you," he said. "Not yet. Please. Just — give me until Christmas Eve."
And something in Gina that had been very carefully held together for two years — since a phone call at seven in the morning on the second Saturday of December in 1984; since a ring given back in a diner booth in March; since every Sunday dinner where her mother said eventually and Donna said any news? — came apart like a gingerbread house with the icing still wet.
"The guy who had it," she said. "That's what you said. You wanted to be the guy who had it. Well, congratulations, Graham. You won. You've got it. You've got the only one in Chicago. I hope you have a really nice Christmas with it, you and Mr. Pruitt."