Downstairs, later, when Nora returned from the sleepover with stories and a crooked paper crown from a game, she asked if she could wear one of Daddy's shirts to pretend office. Marcus said yes. Mei helped with the sleeves. Nora stood in the living room in a man's white dress shirt that was unmistakably Marcus's, tie-less this time, bright brown eyes serious with play.
"Do I look ready for work?"
Marcus and Mei answered together, the old line remade by time into something that no longer cut:
"You look more professional than both of us."
Nora bowed. The shirt hem brushed her ankles. The house held. The family — imperfect, repaired, awake — held with it.
Before that quieter practice settled into their bones, there was the winter of separate Christmases almost happening and then not.
Marcus had planned, in the raw first months, to take Nora to Atlanta to see his mother. Mei had planned to take her to San Jose. The calendar became a battlefield of goodwill. Dr. Patel suggested they choose one holiday under one roof with clear exits if the air went bad. They chose the house. Marcus's mother flew in and slept in the guest room with opinions she mostly kept behind her teeth. Mei's parents drove up with lasagna and silence that was not unkind so much as watchful. Nora hung ornaments with the focus of a surgeon. On Christmas morning she found two stockings on the mantel and did not ask why Daddy's apartment stocking was also there, stuffed and waiting, as if abundance could apologize for geometry.