“I’m good.”
“I keep thinking I should have been here more.”
“You’re here now.”
It was the kindest sentence she could afford. It was also a deflection. He took it as balm. He held out his hand. She came and stood under his arm and they looked at the tree together, two adults in a room they had paid for, with a child asleep down the hall and another man’s name already seated in the year like a guest who had been told he could stay.
“Tomorrow’s going to be simple,” Tom said.
“Simple would be nice.”
He kissed her hair. She closed her eyes. The fire popped. Outside, the first thin snow of the next day’s weather began, so light it could still have been nothing. The porch light caught it and made it look decided.
In the morning the house did the old choreography. Pajamas. Coffee. The small pile. The football muted by afternoon because Tom said he only needed to know the score with his eyes. Cody asked three times when the last present was coming. Tom said, “When the fire looks right.” Laura almost laughed and then did not, because the fire looked right already and Tom was stalling for pleasure, and pleasure on his face was getting harder for her to stand.
She went to the window once and watched the snow and the porch light and thought of Ben’s street, two subdivisions over, the too-big house, the hooks in the hall. She did not text him. She had told him not to text today. He had agreed, which was a form of obedience that made her feel briefly in control of a thing that was no longer controllable. Control is a story people tell themselves while a child is on the floor gathering the sentence that will end the day.
When Tom went to the garage, Laura looked at Cody and almost said, Don’t mention Ben. The words rose and sat on her tongue and would not leave, because saying them would have taught a nine-year-old that Ben was a secret, and a secret is more interesting than a schedule. She said instead, “Be nice when Dad comes back.”