The Switch 2 became, for Tom, a moral object. He had missed the concert. Cody had stood on risers in a shirt that did not fit and sung a song about peace on earth while Tom was in a break room eating something from a machine. Laura had sent a video. Tom had watched it twice in the parking lot with the heater running and had to start the car again because he had been sitting there long enough for the cold to take the engine. He decided, in that parking lot, that Christmas would be the correction. A father cannot rewind a concert. A father can walk into a living room with a box and be, for a few seconds, sufficient.
He bought it on a Tuesday. The clerk asked if he wanted it wrapped. He said no. He wanted Cody to see the official box, the branding, the proof that this was the real thing and not a rumor. He wanted, without using the word, to be official in his own house again. He hid it behind the ice melt and sat in the cold garage for a minute afterward like a man who has hidden a good deed and needs the quiet to belong to him.
Laura found it two days later because she needed the ice melt for the back steps and because secrets in garages are only secrets from people who do not fetch salt. She stood there with her breath showing and looked at the Nintendo colors and felt a heat that was not the heat of being touched. It was the heat of being cornered by timing. She put the ice melt back without using it and went inside and drank water at the sink as if water could change a calendar.
She tried, that week, to talk to Cody in the sideways language parents use when they are not ready for the real language.
“Dad’s excited about Christmas,” she said.
“Me too.”
“If Dad gives you something big, you don’t have to compare it to other presents. You can just like it.”
Cody squinted at her. “Why would I compare it?”
“People compare things.”
“Is Uncle Ben coming for Christmas?”