When Daniel and I were children, he used to decorate her birthday cakes with crooked blue stars. She never fixed them.

“Leave them, dear. That’s the good part.”

So when Daniel’s fiancée, Ashley, asked Grandma to make a four-tier wedding cake decorated with handmade sugar flowers, she was thrilled.

Ashley had complained that professional bakeries charged over $1,000.

“I’ll pay for the ingredients and your time, of course,” she promised during Sunday lunch.

I heard that promise myself.

Grandma lived on a small pension, yet she purchased all the supplies and spent three days baking and decorating the cake.

When I visited, handmade sugar flowers covered her kitchen table.She rubbed her aching wrist before lifting a delicate rose to show me.

“It’s beautiful,” I told her.

She smiled, then immediately returned to decorating.

I stayed overnight so I could drive her to the wedding venue outside town. Ashley was scheduled to collect the cake the following morning.

I woke to the smell of coffee and voices coming from the front hallway.

Ashley had arrived.

She stood beside the cake, arms crossed, holding her phone and photographing it like a customer inspecting a car.

She didn’t offer a single compliment.

Then Grandma spoke, her voice quiet and hesitant.

Daniel studied her silently for a long moment.

“Apparently,” he said, “not enough to pay Grandma.”

Ashley opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

Nothing came out.

Finally, she gathered her skirts, spun around, and stormed through the barn doors, her veil fluttering behind her like a flag.