"Best Present Ever": The story in full, and the best story you will see

Wednesday 5/7/25

I never do this. I'll probably take this down shortly because I can't be giving things away, but sometimes, you have to make a point. I can do excerpts, I can do prose offs, but I am going to put up an entire story this time.

I don't know what is going to make anyone care--or if anything is--just how corrupt this system is. Maybe it's nothing and evil wins. I can only try.

Someone reached out to me today and informed me that Mark Warren--you might remember him--won a Pulitzer this week. Someone that stupid. Someone who isn't even a writer. Someone that odious. That disgusting. A creature like that.

The blind eye that is turned here to evil, and the irrelevance of having a total lack of ability, makes you think the devil is running the show.

That same person told me they were going through their email over the weekend, and they read "Best Present Ever" again, which is from 2022. And they couldn't believe--except, of course they could--how amazing it was. How much better it was than anything else out there. How it was impossible to successfully argue if it was more for children or adults, because a child and an adult would read it completely differently and be amazed for different reasons.

I sent this story to Michelle Dotter at Dzanc and said why don't we publish it as a standalone book, like a Christmas stocking stuffer.

And she said, "We don't do that." She then insulted the work by basically calling it a nice little little story. Because that's all it was. Well, you're about to see this nice little story.

I sent it to the publishing department of Amazon that puts out what they call Amazon "singles"--stories of this length that are stand-alone works. Four different people. Not so much as a response. But they did one with Halimah Marcus. The same person who told her Electric Literature intern to publish her bad story when the Electric Literature intern was the fiction editor at Indiana Review. In other words, Amazon did one of their "singles" by this joke of a person and a writer. For other reasons. Because it's always other reasons. You know that, Halimah. I'm not telling you anything you don't know as well as I do. That's why you hated me right away and could only hate me. It was automatic. Not earned hate. Automatic hate because of what someone else is, and what you are not and never could be.

It was sent to One Story. Image. I could go on and on. I don't need to.

Would you care? Would anyone care about what's happening here? Because I think if anyone cared, they'd be standing by my side. And no one is. Just like everyone knows that what's in these pages is true. Or I'd have all kinds of problems, wouldn't I?

And there's nothing.

And we all know why.

I don't think people care at all. I think all morality now is lip service. With an agenda. There isn't any good. There isn't any doing of the right things. There isn't justice. Nothing in publishing is real. Awards, who is hyped. The Guggenheim, the Pulitzer, The New Yorker, Granta. Jackson Howard. Mark Warren. On and on and on and on.

The same person was upset that the likes of that entry about the Marathon and Commentary and the VQR and Mark Warren and so much more could appear here in these pages and there was no fallout, no repercussions. This expose of evil. Because that's what it is, right? It's not up for debate. That's an airing and outing of evil people in that post. How is it not?

How is that behavior not so bad? How is any of that behavior--read the entry--defensible? Who could possibly think that?

No one.

And who cares? Anyone? What about the moral crusaders? The activists? People with a conscience? Where are you?

I think it's all lip service in this world. People only care about what gets them something. They don't care about right and wrong, including the people who frame their lives as being all about advocating for what's right.

This same person, having finished reading "Best Present Ever" for the latest time, then read it again immediately after. And they said they noticed even more. There was so much in it. So much depth and beauty. It was like a miracle. A miracle work of art. And then they were angry. And upset. That something like this is being kept from the world.

I wrote this story. I wrote it once. Which means, the 500 other stories I've written since 2018 are completely different from this story. And from each other. I don't have variations of this story.

So here it is. For now. Like I said, it's likely coming down. But why don't you look at this, and look at everything else, anything else out there anywhere, and tell me that any of this is about what's the best work and justice.

***

Best Present Ever

Amara was eight-years-old when she received what she was certain had to be the best Christmas gift ever.

She had done what she usually did on Christmas mornings, which was to get up before anyone else—it practically felt like she hadn’t slept at all—and come downstairs and wait by the Christmas tree. If she had a brother or a sister, it might have been harder to be first, but she didn’t, so it wasn’t.

Amara could beat her mom and dad downstairs easily. Then she just had to wait for as long as it took for her parents to wake up and join her.

To tell the truth, she didn’t mind waiting. It was one of the best times of the year or of Amara’s whole life.

She liked to sit by the skirt of the tree with the presents and feel the anticipation. And the quiet. There was more quiet in that room at that time, Amara figured, than in the middle of the deepest forest, when even the birds hadn’t come out yet and there was snow on the ground because a forest with snow was quieter than a forest without snow.

She might be waiting by herself for a whole hour. Maybe more. Not that Amara’s parents were making her wait. They were simply asleep.

The quiet wasn’t only quiet, though; it was like the air itself had stopped moving.

Amara even wondered—and she got a little nervous, too—that she’d never know anything so calm again as she got older. The calm was important. She didn’t know why, exactly, but Amara just knew.

What she didn’t know was how did the world get so quiet at that one time?

She wanted to bottle it, but she also wanted it to be free. The quiet and the peace. But every year, she’d think about bottling that quiet at least once, and that made her wonder if the quiet from last Christmas was bottled in a part of her but also still free, just as the quiet from this Christmas would be.  

The presents were arranged so that they made a forest of gifts. Instead of trees—well, besides the one big tree—this forest had boxes with wrapping paper. Amara sat on the carpet so that some presents were in front of her, some behind her, and some on both sides. She liked to be surrounded in the middle and that way she could pretend she was in very magical woods that were right in her family’s living room.

On Christmas Eve she went to bed as early as possible—she didn’t even watch Rudolph—just so she could have her time to sit here alone in the Present Forest. That was the silly name she gave to this spot of hers around the tree on Christmas mornings. It was her special tradition. But the Present Forest wasn’t really about presents. Not that way.

If she was perfectly still, someone might have even thought Amara was a present herself. She thought of the other kids on her street. Her friends. They wouldn’t want her for a present, but that’s because they knew her. She already played with them.

You want a present to be something new, Amara figured. She also thought about how her friends probably didn’t have a forest of presents to sit in like she did. Or a field of presents like the one in “Jingle Bells,” because sometimes Amara’s living room was a forest and sometimes it was a field. A lot could change in the space of that hour in the quiet and stillness that Amara spent by herself on Christmas mornings.  

It seemed like she also started to think about her friends after the same amount of time each year, because she had the memory of how she’d thought of them last year. Then it was harder to enjoy waiting for her parents, which was Amara’s favorite part of Christmas. She didn’t tell her mom or dad, but she wouldn’t have minded if they stayed in bed a bit longer. But this new year felt different somehow.

As Amara tried to figure out why, she thought some more about Binny. Binny was Amara’s best friend. She had a jazzy name. That’s what a teacher at school had said when they were six.

The teacher was extra nice to Binny. Binny was short for Elizabeth, which was funny, because it didn’t seem like it would be, but it also fit if you knew Binny.  

Amara liked Binny more than she could say. She gave her food because there wasn’t a lot to eat in Binny’s house. Amara’s mom had her bring cookies and cupcakes and fresh baked bread when she went over Binny’s to play.

Binny’s mom said, “You don’t have to do that,” after Amara arrived with chocolate chip muffins or even lasagna and Amara would reply with something like, “My mom says I’m here all the time and it’s the least we can do.”

She thought Binny’s mom was embarrassed, but Amara was there a lot. There was no denying that. Binny’s dad could make the most beautiful tables and he let Binny and Amara help sometimes in the garage on Saturdays which was a lot of fun. It was kind of crazy how much Amara was there. They had a better time at Binny’s. Some of their best talks. And they made up lot of games. More games than when they were at Amara’s house, and games with your best friend are tough to beat.

Amara’s friend Tara who also lived on their street sometimes had bruises on her arms but nowhere else. Amara didn’t ask her what was on her Christmas list, but she’d ask if she was okay and Tara would answer that she was, but Amara thought it was still best to check again before too long. Some years Tara got something and other years she didn’t get much. She’d had three dads and the one she had now wasn’t nice.  

Amara asked her dad if Tara’s mom was stupid. She didn’t want to say the word “stupid” but she couldn’t think of another and she wanted an honest answer from her father.

He wouldn’t lie, but if you didn’t ask your question the right way someone could answer it wrong without trying to.

“Sometimes people maybe nurse unrealistic expectations,” Amara’s father began, then looked at the confused expression on his child’s face.

“She’s maybe a little unsure of herself,” he said instead. “A little unsure of yourself doesn’t mean bad.”

Amara liked to talk and walk with her dad. They’d gone on one of their special walks together yesterday. They were the best right before Christmas.

Amara did what she always did and put her hand in her father’s left hand. They usually went the same way, but the walk never felt the same.

There was a small park that they normally went through. This time there was a woman sitting on a bench in the middle of the park. Amara thought she was talking to herself. She squeezed her dad’s left hand without meaning to. Amara planned to smile at the woman as they passed. Her dad would help the woman if she needed help, which he would know. That’s how Amara’s dad was.

But as they got closer and Amara was getting ready to smile at the woman, she heard a rustling from the gigantic pile of leaves on the side of the paved path across from the woman’s bench. Someone who worked for the town must have blown all of those leaves together so that they were nearly tall as Amara.

She heard a voice coming from inside the middle of that leaf mountain. A head popped out. It was a little boy and he was shouting happily to the woman sitting and watching who Amara realized was his grandmother. The boy saw Amara. She squeezed her dad’s hand again.

“You must be having so much fun,” Amara called to the boy.

The boy answered by throwing some of the leaves in the air, but he seemed just as covered by the mountain of leaves as before.

There was a time when Amara would have wanted to play with him. It’s not that she didn’t now. But she thought it was the boy’s time to enjoy that pile for himself. It’s a great feeling having your own super big leaf pile and it doesn’t last forever. Then again, maybe it does.

Amara made sure to smile at the woman on the bench who hadn’t been talking to herself. This time Amara’s father squeezed her hand, and they kept going on their walk.

On the other side of the park was the senior center. Five or six of the women who lived there liked to sit outside, no matter how cold it was. They said all kinds of words that Amara wasn’t supposed to use or even hear.

The older women sat on benches in front of a large window. Behind them, on the other side of the glass, was a table with a manger on it. Baby Jesus was in the manger, and Mary and Joseph. The Three Wise Men. Shepherds. There were donkeys and some lambs. It was a very thorough manger and pretty cool even if you were just interested in the animals. Anything you wanted.  

Amara’s dad liked these women, even though they used some of the words they did. They got pretty wrapped up in their conversations and didn’t see Amara and her dad at first as they got closer. Then one of them saw Amara, and she said, “You didn’t hear that, sweetie.”

Amara felt another squeeze of her dad’s hand.

“Okay,” Amara said.

The women liked to touch Amara’s face. It was just something they did. Not all of them each time, but one or two. Especially at Christmas. Their fingers felt like the leather of one of Amara’s mom’s purses, but Amara liked that. It was different.

“I hope you get everything you want for Christmas,” another one of the women said. “Have you been good this year?”

Amara thought for a second.

“I’ve tried,” she said, which made all of the women laugh.

The senior center was always the last stop on these walks Amara took with her dad. She liked that they finished here. Just as she liked seeing the manger and also playing along and saying she hadn’t heard what she definitely did hear.

Amara had another friend on her street who was a boy named Chris but he wasn’t her boyfriend. Not yet. Maybe someday when they were in their thirties.

He was the smartest kid Amara knew. Chris was practically his own parent. He was scary smart, but he was nice.

Chris only had a mom because his dad had died in a different town where they used to live before Amara knew Chris.

His mom was always off somewhere working on the community. That’s what she called it. She had many causes.

Some were about immigrants, some were about crimes, some were about boys who used to be girls and girls who who used to be boys. It was like other jobs for her that kept her so busy. Super, super busy.

Amara didn’t even know what Chris’s mom’s first job was. She cared about those other jobs more than anything. Amara figured that if she knew this, then Chris must have known way more than she did, because he was a lot smarter. But he didn’t talk about it. Not to Amara. But not to anyone else either. She could tell that he didn’t, and it wasn’t as if Amara thought she was particularly good at knowing things.

The last time Amara had been at Chris’s house it was the first week of December and Chris and his mom didn’t have a tree.

No one Amara knew got so excited at school for Christmas as Chris. He was kind of shy, but he sang the loudest when they did carols.

There was still time to get a tree, but in Amara’s experience, if you didn’t have one by the end of that first week, it wasn’t going to happen.

She’d found some old Christmas records in her dad’s collection and he said that Amara could have them, which meant that it would be okay for her to give them to Chris the next time she saw him. He had a collection of records already, but she was pretty sure he didn’t have these records.

Amara thought of the faces of her friends as she sat alone on Christmas morning. She thought a lot about faces. She figured she may have thought about faces more than most people do.

Every time that Amara left the bathroom, she stopped to look at her own face in the mirror after she was done washing.

She’d look at her face for a full five seconds, which can feel like a long time when it’s just you looking at you.  

She thought about how a face can look a certain way, but a face often doesn’t tell us how a person feels. What is really happening inside of them. What they know that maybe you don’t know. What they’re going through which maybe you’ve not gone through.

After the five seconds were up, Amara would do something else before she left the bathroom. She’d take her right hand, which was her only hand, and she’d tuck it into the hollow beneath her left shoulder, where her other arm used to be. She didn’t remember ever having another arm. If she was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, her fingers would dance over the skin where the arm was missing. It was smooth. Like the inside of an avocado peel.

Her face said one thing, and the hollow under her shoulder where her arm had been said something else.

Amara always tried to keep that in mind when it came to other people. Except they had both their arms, probably. But just because their face looked one way, didn’t mean they weren’t go through something hard that you might not know about.

It was Amara’s way, too, of thinking about her first parents. It wasn’t possible, she’d read, for her to remember them because she was only a baby, but she did. She remembered the last time they’d ever been together, the three of them. She didn’t remember anything else, but what she did remember was still a lot.  

They’d gone to a Christmas concert. Amara was two-years-old. She couldn’t recall the concert and the music that was played, but she remembered after, when they were leaving. A man had put a bomb in the lobby of the theater and it went off right when Amara and her parents were getting near the door.

But it was really weird because Amara remembered in a way that was so strong that what she remembered became a part of her. And that was something else that she thought about on these early Christmas mornings, when she was tired.

Her first parents had wanted to go to sleep once the bomb had gone off. It was so hard for them to stay awake after what had happened to them. Amara knew what they had been thinking. She could feel it.

They were staying awake for her. To protect her. Amara’s mother had ripped off a piece of her father’s shirt. She tied it near Amara’s shoulder. Tied it tight. Her father held Amara close to him, on the ground, so that no one could trample her as everyone ran to the door. And when that was all over, and only then, did they go to sleep.

Amara knew that none of her friends would probably have a morning like the one she had. That she’d already had and was still having. Or they never said that they got up early and just sat. But they were also having mornings that she wasn’t having. Everyone was having something. And that’s just how it is.

She thought about Binny and her Christmas morning. Binny was really popular. She was easy to like. Everyone wanted to play with Binny. That’s how it went at school and in the neighborhood after school got out.

But any time that Amara hadn’t wanted to play, because she was sad or felt a certain way, Binny had stayed with her. They’d just play together then. The two of them. Or they wouldn’t play and would sit together. And that was okay.

Binny never said, “We play all the time, I want to play with them, I’m going to go without you.”

Binny never even said, “How come you don’t feel like it today?”

She just let Amara feel the way she did. And she stayed with her, if that’s what Amara wanted. That’s always how Binny was.

Amara was grateful but sad. Not in an awful way. Just the sad way. And sleepy. So sleepy.

She was sleepy enough that she could have put her head on one of the gifts and taken a little nap, when she heard a thudding from deeper in the Present Forest. Or was it a rustling?

No, the sound was more like like a cautious knocking. The way someone might knock if they were knocking on a door but they weren’t sure who was on the other side. Or they were trying to get their courage up to do more knocks so that someone would hear them, but without coming across as rude.  

Amara looked all around her. She was pretty sure she was extra awake now.

Was there a sister in one of those boxes? That would be so weird. Amara wanted a sister more than anything else she could receive. Receiving wasn’t her favorite—giving was. But it was hard to think of what to give, and easy to think of what you wanted.

She’d love her sister so much, and she and Binny would watch her all the time, because they’d be trusted and they were already such an amazing duo when they were together.

Amara would love her sister from the first second however they happened to meet. Even if it was in a really strange way. That could be even better if it happened here under the tree. It didn’t need to be at the hospital. The tree would be perfect.

She'd protect her sister starting from this very first morning, in the stillness and quiet, where it was safe, but it takes time to figure what’s safe and what isn’t. She’d care for her and show her the ropes, which was a funny phrase her dad used a bunch.

But a sister in a box would probably cry before she knocked, and no one was crying in this room where Amara sat on the floor.

She turned over her shoulder, where the hollow of skin was, to check if maybe her parents had come downstairs and and were standing behind her, but no one was there.

The air was as still as any had ever been in the forest of soft snow and sleeping birds. As still as on any of these mornings since Amara had begun her tradition. Stiller.

The knocking got louder now. It became faster, too. The knocking even sounded like a voice that said, “Hey, can you hear me? I’ve been knocking for a bit!”

Amara put her hands on each of the presents, feeling for the knocking, moving from one to another and going deeper and deeper into the Present Forest until she was way, way under the tree.

It didn’t even feel like she was in a room anymore, and she knew this room better than any room, except her own bedroom, and probably Binny’s, too, because that’s where they read books together that Amara let Binny borrow but really she was giving them to her because they made Binny so happy.

Finally, she saw it. A box with wrapping paper that glowed. It actually glowed. And Amara knew that was the box from which the knocking was coming.

This wasn’t a joke. And it wasn’t electricity. The box didn’t just reflect the light. It couldn’t reflect the light because there was way less of it here under all of the branches in the heart of the Present Forest.

The box itself was pure light, and Amara wasn’t sure she’d even be able to touch it or if her hands would go straight through.

She knew she had to try, though, and she would break her ultimate Christmas morning rule, the rule of rules, that she would never open a present early.

But this was different. She had to. Amara wasn’t being greedy. She was doing what she thought she must do. What her parents would want her to do. What she wanted to do, but not because of what she was about to receive. This was more important.

Amara put her hand into the blazing light of the box. She could feel it pulsing. The box seemed to take over the fingers of her hand, her wrist, the bottom of her arm, as if it were controlling how Amara ought to move, how she should touch and receive this gift.

She watched as her five fingers became a blur, and just like that, the box was open, the way one second it’s not your birthday and the next it is.

There was a blazing man inside. Or not a man at all. But also not an elf. Not a gnome. Not a doll, certainly. Sometimes he was yellow and sometimes he was red and sometimes he was orange.

He changed between each of Amara’s blinks.

This blazing being was so close but he also seemed so far away, like Amara was looking at him through a telescope. She loved him immediately. Maybe not as much as she’d love a sister, but that had been silly to think that her mom would have put Amara’s new sister in a box under the tree.

The blazing man was built for being this kind of surprise, though. Amara didn’t even know how he worked, but however he worked, there wasn’t any present more important than this one. Amara just knew.

But the blazing man also might not have been a man. Amara couldn’t tell what he or she or it was. But it didn’t matter. The blazing being was the blazing being.

There was a string around its foot, with a round tag attached to the string. They were made of fire, the same as the blazing being, but they looked like they’d feel cool in Amara’s hand, and she knew that they wouldn’t burn her, so she freed the tag from the the bottom of the blazing being’s leg.

On the tag were very small letters, so she brought it close to her face.

“I am the solution to the world’s problems,” the tag read. “Give of me as you can.”

These were really great instructions. Sometimes the gifts Amara got had complicated instructions and only her dad could figure out how to put Amara’s gifts together. He was as good at it as probably anyone in the whole wide world, but Amara knew that she could do this one herself.

The blazing being even took Amara’s hand, like they were going to play, and she lifted him from the glowing box. This was the best Christmas present Amara had ever gotten and it wasn’t close.

Amara was more excited now than even last Christmas, when she had a strange feeling that something was glowing at the back of the Present Forest, but she couldn’t find what it was.

Maybe because she was too small back then. But it was different now. So much different.

Amara and the blazing being—who was no longer than her hand, but she was pretty sure he could be whatever size he wanted, or you wanted him to be—advanced together out from under the tree.

First Amara crawled, then she stood, and as she did so, the arm of the little being stretched so that they could keep holding hands. It was a super trick but it wasn’t a trick. Not really. It was how it was supposed to be.

Amara knew that everything that was happening was real and she was so relieved she had gotten up as early as she did, otherwise she would have missed out. It all had to be a certain way and it all had been. Thank goodness.  

If not, the gift might have disappeared. It was a gift of timing and need. Like the very best gifts. And understanding that the time was right for a difference to be made, which is also a gift, as is the knowledge that the time is always right to do the things that matter.  

They walked through the rest of the living room where the tree was, and through the dining room, and down a hallway that had Christmas lights on each side on the ground so that it was like some kind of festive runway.

The blazing being did all of the leading, but Amara kept the same pace, getting stronger and stronger as they walked right up to the front door of Amara’s house.

Amara reached for the knob, turned it, and pulled the door open, letting the outside in, and the inside out. 

The cold air felt good against her bare knees. They’d been hot.

The blazing being turned and looked at Amara. What a figure he was. What a face he had. Not that the blazing being was a he or was always a he. Amara looked into that face as deeply as any face she had ever seen.

The face began to change. It still glowed with light but then the face looked like that of her mom who was still asleep upstairs. And then the face of her dad who was also asleep, but would probably be up first but by just a little bit.

Then the blazing being had the face of Tara, and then Chris, and the old women from the senior center who smiled a different way than they usually smiled when they saw Amara walking over to them with her dad. And then the boy who played in the pile of leaves and his grandmother who sat on the bench and somehow played in those leaves, too, while she was sitting there.

And there was the face of Binny looking like she did when Amara was too sad to play with a whole group of kids. She wasn’t sure why she was so sad, exactly, just that she was. Amara knew that Binny understood by the way she would look at her then. Binny didn’t even need to say anything, and Amara always thought, “Thank you, Binny, my sweet best friend.”

The face of the blazing being changed again, becoming like two faces at once, but they were both somehow separate. They were more than faces and more like the hearts of the people who care about us as much as possible. They were the faces of Amara’s first mom and her first dad. They were so alive and awake, and they always would be, blazing forever.

“Oh,” Amara said, stepping closer to touch their cheeks, and the faces changed again.

Now they became the faces of people Amara had never met, people she would never meet, people she hadn’t met yet. They had a hundred million names. Charlie and Lilah and Amelia and Remy and Mallory and names in different languages. All of the languages of the world. It was like Amara knew every one of the people she saw. Or they knew her. That they were all connected somehow. All a part of the same thing.

Amara could feel the cold now on the tops of her feet. She looked down to see that she didn’t have her slippers on.

When she looked back up, the face of the blazing being was once again just the face of the blazing being.

It stood in front of Amara, in the open doorway, as if it waiting for instructions from her.   

“Okay,” Amara said simply, giving her present official permission to leave. Not that it belonged to her. Well, it did and it didn’t.

They’d only played for like a minute and yet it felt like it had been as long as she’d been alive. Longer.  

Amara wasn’t sure what else to say. Usually when Amara got an amazing gift she turned to her parents and said thank you over and over again. It‘s not that she didn’t believe in other things like Santa, but still. Then something came to her.

“Go to Binny’s house first,” she said to the blazing being who was now barely on the bricks of the front steps, moving towards the frozen lawn, looking up into Amara’s eyes as he kept changing colors of light as she blinked. “Please.”

She wanted to make sure she was thinking about Binny because Binny deserved to be thought about a lot. Binny was so kind and Amara would do anything for her to be happy forever, no matter what. And even though no one could be happy always, Amara still wanted to help Binny try.

She didn’t wait to see the blazing being hop away, or fly, or bound, or turn into a streak of light and shoot, or whatever the blazing being did. Amara knew he could do them all.

It was enough for Amara just to close the door and feel the stillness again. The quiet. To think about faces and what other people might really be going through. What a morning this had been. What a life this is.

She was so tired when her parents woke her. Amara had even drooled all over the wrapping paper of a big present where she’d rested her head in front of the tree.

It took her a second to remember what day it was and where she was and then she wasn’t tired at all or embarrassed about the drool.

The best part had already happened, but that was okay, because something else was going to keep happening, and Amara was more aware of the things that matter most than she was the year before, just as she probably would be next year.   

“I see you beat us down here as usual,” her father said.

He sounded proud and he hadn’t even had his coffee yet.

Amara’s mom laughed. She cupped her belly as her laughter kept coming out.

The skin of her stomach was still mostly flat, but there was news to be told on this day, or they could let it keep until tomorrow, for the day after Christmas. A second Christmas.

Either way. But first things first. Those presents. What did Amara call them? The Present Forest. How that girl of theirs loved to come downstairs by herself on Christmas morning and fall asleep under the tree. Four years straight now. No doubt about it.

Just like Amara’s mom had no doubt that Amara would be the best big sister ever when the time came, and that time was definitely coming.

Amara had so much love to give, it was as if it blazed within her. She was practically the gift of love itself.