The Best Gift

by Markham, Wendy

  Things are pretty much . . . well, not perfect. But, as Doris always liked to say—among other things—perfect is boring.

  “Mr. Martino, can you please put extra cherries on my sister’s sundae?” Angelina asks.

  “No! I don’t want cherries!” Doris explodes.

  Maybe someday they’ll get along, Clara thinks optimistically. Maybe, when they’re all grown up, they’ll be the best of friends. Wouldn’t that be nice?

  It would.

  But you can’t control what might happen in the future any more than you can change what happened in the past.

  “All you can do is live,” Doris told her once, a long time ago. “Live for today, live for each other, live for yourself.”

  Oh, and one more thing . . .

  “I believe in magic, and so do you. Don’t ever forget it.”

  “I won’t,” Clara promised her old friend, the last time she ever saw her—in this lifetime, anyway. “I won’t ever forget.”

  And she never has.