The roof stopped arguing in June. The nights did not stop. Once a household has rearranged itself around a differential, the differential starts to look like character. Tom told Laura in July that he could bid back to days in September. In August the overtime for the holiday quarter landed on a clipboard and he initialed it because the number looked like a winter without fear. Laura said, “If you sign it, don’t talk about coming home early as if it’s still a plan.” He heard irritation. He did not hear the other thing, which was a woman telling him the house had stopped waiting in the old way.
On the night of Cody’s concert he sat in his car in the plant lot and watched the video Laura sent until the battery warning came on. Boys on risers. A construction-paper snowflake behind Cody’s left ear. Cody searching the folding chairs for a face that was not there and then singing anyway, which is a kind of bravery Tom did not have a word for in the break room. He pressed the phone to his forehead. A coworker tapped the window and Tom put the phone away as if he had been caught at something tender, which he had.
He called Laura after the last note in the video.
“How was he?”
“He was good. He looked for you.”
“I know. I saw.”
“Seeing a video is not the same as being looked for.”
He stared at the steering wheel. “I’ll make it up.”
“You keep saying that as if time is a store.”
“There’s a box in the garage,” he said, and then stopped, because he had not meant to mention the box yet.